Whispered Word
by StrangeAffinity
Summary: There is a thin line between friendship and rommance. In the early years of the X-Men two students learn that this line is all too easily stumbled across. (JS fluff) COMPLETE!
1. Part I

  


**Whispered Word**

_"Above all things I believe in Love"_

***

**Intro P1 - The Orphanage _~Scott_**

***

  


It is a whispered word forged from the tears and tongues of man, woman and child alike. 

It is a shouted word cried by preachers and convicts, sinners and saints. 

It is passed from person to person with hardly a thought or a breath. 

Everyone understands its meaning, but to everyone its meaning is not the same. It changes and morphs with time, the only other constant, warping into other definitions, other meanings. It stands out stark in garish reds and violets on a black and white canvas, encompassing all other words within it. Calling to every being with its siren song, it lives and refuses to be understood. Many strive to keep it close, huddling and strangling it as it thrashes breathlessly against their chests, others give it, speak it, whisper it, shout it, breathe it, but the one who is without it is only drowning themselves. It is thrown around carelessly, beaten to death with the stick of repetitiveness, cherished, whispered, shouted, spoken, written, felt, abused. 

You still feel it in your memories sometimes, refusing to be washed out. It sticks to your thoughts like flecks of gold in a pool of oil, lighter, brighter, beautiful. A day ago, perhaps a year, maybe more, it is impossible to discern but its glow it still there, inexorable. Once upon a time you had it grasped between your fingers, flooding through the creases, dancing across your face, washing down to the ground in a golden pool around you. 

You can't even remember the dance anymore. The steps are lost on you and no music moves it. Your face is blank now as far as people can see. The only dance now is in your eyes, disjointed, unconnected, soundless, sightless, conducted under ruby veils, where no one can see. Sometimes you aren't even sure wether it is hiding or you are. Would you even want it if it returned? 

Tentatively you reach out a finger to touch the flecks of gold, but the oil ripples and washes the gold out of your reach. You can't remember, a day ago, perhaps a year, maybe more, you had it. Frustrated you stir and push the golden memories to the bottom, wishing to drown them. Maybe one day you will follow them, drown yourself, in search of the whispered word, that may have never been yours in the first place, but you will never know if you can't remember. 

You won't open your eyes anymore. You are too afraid of the visions behind their lids to open them. Invisible black fingers hold them shut. Fear has you by the throat, with its thumbs jabbed over your eyes. To open your eyes now would require a will, a will that you don't have anymore. It is so much easier to live in a world of black and wish to die. Not even the gold can touch you in a place such as that. 

So you sit on your bed, hugging knobby frog-like knees with callused sandpaper hands. The hands –yours– had once been the hands of a child, and still would be if perhaps you had lived another life, if you could remember. But the mind has a will of it's own, and it shuts the doors to the past and bolts them tight. Sound is muffled behind these doors, like fingers drumming on the inside of a desk, muffled but still discernable. Like you blind, alone, but still living. Barely. 

Ratty sheets crunch between clenching fists, the silence is suffocating, but you don't notice, you've been suffocating as long as you could remember. Nobody wants to share a room with you. You don't see. You don't talk. You don't eat. You don't sleep. You don't. They won't make you. They can't make you. They don't. 

The whispered word has no meaning to you, and thus your definition is correct.   


***

**Part One**

***

For generations the Xavier estate had been a quiet one, filled with well-to-do people with more to do than be making appearances around their home. Everyone simply assumed that people lived there even though they rarely saw them, and the Xaviers conducted their business outside in the rest of the world. The whole estate faded from importance in most people's minds because nothing important ever happened there. Then a certain heir by the name of Charles Francis Xavier, the last of the American branch of Xaviers, came into possession of the vast estate. Charles was considered a very peculiar man from the start with some very peculiar ideas. He was confined to a wheelchair for the better part of his life and never married, but had anyone bothered to stop by the estate now, they would have heard the laughter of children ringing through the air around that house and the sounds of small feet tripping up and down the antique corridors of the mansion. They would have seen an age-old estate being made young again with the presence of young ones, possibly even laughing to itself somewhere deep inside the timbers of its foundation. 

It was a beautiful Spring in Winchester New York, riding the fence between seasons, seemingly about to tumble into the arms of summer at any moment. The air was comfortably warm and still that particular morning, and thick as cream with the pleasant smells of new life. The land surrounding the estate was bursting at the seems with all of the splendor it had saved up over the winter. A few frantic gardeners were busily trying to tame the outburst, mostly clipping wayward hedges and training roses around the mansion itself, but beyond the outer wall the man who took care of the orchard was busiest of all. He was a greying, waxen faced man with calloused skin, who had already lost his looks to the devil of old age, and now his joy was in pampering the baby pink apple blossoms and making sure no pests could harm his precious trees. 

He had been with the estate since before the previous occupant passed on, but he carried a special fondness for the familiarity. The trees satisfied his need to take care of something beautiful, something worth having, and he had all but devoted his life to this particular clan of them. Charles was a peculiar sort of man, but he was a good man compared to the Xaviers he had known in the past. Charles was the only owner of the estate to ever spare his gardeners any words that weren't strictly necessary, and only Charles looked at him like he was a significant being. Charles had always appreciated his orchard and the work he put into it. It was during this tedious work that he was startled by a scream. 

He whirled around just in time to see the culprit skitter past at top speed. It was a young girl, no older than fifteen with long red hair that billowed out behind her as she ran like some better phoenix of a bitter memory. She set the Eden of apple trees on fire with her laughter, reminding him of his own mortality and bringing the ashes of his youth to the forefront. Spring will always be the season of life, and she had risen to preside as queen over the gardens of Xavier's estate, his first student, the wild powerhouse that would eventually shatter the bonds of his control. It was dangerous, but then again, Xavier never could walk away from a challenge. She was dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, but had completely forgotten to put on shoes. She still retained half the mentality of a child, and with this innocence came the knowledge that shoes are not essential to having fun, and are in fact, more cumbersome than helpful. She flew through the orchard on wings of spitfire and gold, and every once in a while she would glance over her shoulder. 

Her pursuer was a boy, about the same age as herself, who had also forgone the idea of footwear. Self-control would always come easy to him, after months of voluntary blindness and the knowledge of a broken, destructive power, that was always turned on. Memories of abuse, of lose, of death were always buzzing around in the background of his mind. He shrouded himself in cold, and moved like the water, silent, purposeful, contained, putting out the fires his companion struck up. Charles Xavier had introduced the two of them with practiced patience, as if he knew what the results would be. For every queen there is a king, and this boy was the only one who could touch her without being burned. She would lend her wings and he could fly, but by himself he was always the water, youth gone to fast, sucked into a straw. He had regular brown hair, an unseen eyes that left it to the imagination to see the color in his red glasses, barring the windows to his soul, dousing everyone around him in coolness. In times like this though, with the girl, he was readable. The orchard waited in silent interest, and their caretaker stopped his work to watch their progress down the row of trees. 

They scampered barefoot down the lush green carpet of new grass, without even the time to admire the beauty of the blossoming trees. He saw the boy finally catch up to her, and she gave another little yelp as he tagged her shoulder. Then they were both off again, like bullets fired from a gun, with the girl after the boy now, moving like water, like fire, like spring. He watched them with amusement until they only appeared as little blurs, and then disappeared from sight. The trees whispered in the breeze. The birds around the orchard chanted. The children shouted distantly. He turned back to his work, muttering things about children, waking up too early, disturbing the peace, and other things that contradicted the smile on his face. 

The boy and the girl this man had observed. were indeed engaged in an all out game of tag with no clear winner as of yet. They came out on the other side of the orchard and made a sharp turn to the left. Somewhere during all this the girl tagged the boy and speed up, flexing wings, boxing the air. They ran like they were treading on hot coals, down a trail past a crowd of hedges and gardens in disrepair with flowers and weeds peeping from their beds to observe the pyretic chase and finally, they came to the edge of a forest of trees. These woods in turn, were at the edge of a lake, and one familiar tree in particular caught the girl's eye. It was a good sized oak tree with branches dipping into the water, bending towards the water like some carved wooden effigy of the damned, forced to have a thirst that could not be quenched for all of eternity. 

The girl ran up to it on lightened feet, slapped a hand on its trunk and cried, "Base!" quivering triumph in her eyes and untidy red curls tangling in the breeze. 

The boy, by the name of Scott Summers, caught up to her grinning in spite of his loss, as if he half expected her to jump away again so he could tag her, "I'd say you've won Marvel Girl. For now." 

Jean Grey simply smirked at him, swept the errant strands of red from her face, and lifted herself onto one of the branches. Scott followed suite, scaled up the tree until he reached 'his' branch, the highest that would support his weight, and sat looking down at his companion, who was inching out along the branch she had selected, until she was positioned over the water. Both of them inspected their feet and found them green as the grass they had carelessly trampled. 

"So Jean," He said crossing his arms behind his head and leaning back easily against the rough trunk, "Did you bring us anything to eat?" 

"Just this," She pulled out a smashed wad of bread crusts in a plastic bag from her pocket, "I was going to feed them to the fish, but you're welcome to have some too." 

Scott wrinkled his nose and shook his head. He assumed the guise indifference, but he did lean forward to watch as she covered the final distance and lay forward on the branch, dangling precariously over the water. He had to wonder at her sense of balance, as she clung easily to the branch with her knees and opened the plastic bag. Only Jean would save her bread crusts and find something useful to do with them. The thought brought a grin to his face, and he watched her quietly go about her task. 

She looked like a normal girl. He noticed this most of all because it was the one thing that set her apart from him. Anger is like a drug, a white hot stimulant that rushes through the veins, allowing one to escape everything, dulling other emotions so it is all one can feel. It only acts as a cheep drug store lipstick, covering up the rest with bright, blinding rage, in hot pink and blood red, but it is quick to smudge, wash away, leaving bare imperfect sentiments behind. Jealousy is something far worse, it is a disease that is almost impossible to exorcize. It sits in the heart and broods if left undelt with, only growing bigger and more spiteful. Scott didn't usually get jealous when it came to Jean Grey, but the years have a way of changing things against all better intent. 

There was no way anyone could tell she was a mutant simply by looking at her. People tended to see mutants as ugly creatures with hideous physical mutations. She was anything but that. In fact, she was beautiful, all red hair, green eyes and little hints of freckles that stood out on her face when she turned pale, like mini constellations, but perhaps that was actually a side effect of her mutantation, a ploy to attract the opposite sex. In any case, he wasn't quite sure who he was jealous of anymore. Of her, or because of her? That was the question. 

Then, as if on cue, the plastic bag slipped out of her fingers, but before it hit the water it froze in midair and levitated back into her grasp like a trained animal rather than an inanimate object. He allowed a bitter laugh to escape him like dark chocolate, the only kind of laugh he had back at the orphanage. 

"What's so funny?" She asked without even looking up. 

"I was just thinking how much you don't look like a mutant," He said to her back. 

"Really," She busied herself dropping little crumbles of bread into the lake causing a pattern of ripples, that condensed, dilated, wove through the stratosphere of the water, that looked clear enough to be white wine in the suns reflection, "Why's that?" 

A million answers rushed to his mind and none of them sounded very good to him, especially the ones that began with, 'You're beautiful'. He shrugged even though she wasn't looking anyway and mumbled something along the lines of, "You just don't look like one." 

A curtain of red hair kept falling past her shoulders and in front of her face. She had been pawing furiously at it for the last few minutes, trying to get it to stay tucked behind her ear, but seeing that it was a hopeless task, she finally let it be. He heard the splash of a fish in the water below as she added another bread crumb. By then she had a small army of blue gills and one prowling carp looking for small ones to pick off. An even bigger armada of small bread crumbs still resisted on the top of the water, lighter than glass, disintegrating across the surface until they became unidentifiable. She said nothing for a long time, making him think she hadn't heard him, but then she spoke. 

"That's because it's all in my head," She said softly, "I can hide it from the rest of the world, but it's always in my mind, my own personal hell in a box, unless I keep up my shields." 

The shroud of upper canopy leaves cast the shade in modeled shadows over them. He glanced up absently and was able to pick out a few pieces of the wet blue sky shining through the cracks. At least to everyone else it was blue. The sky turned parched red after his mutation manifested, and had been bleeding ever since. He hadn't even thought about the sky before his mutation, true to the old cliche 'You don't know what you got til' it's gone'. Now, it was a dying smattering of deep orange red, that people would associate with the end of the world. In that sense, the world was ending every day. 

"Why don't you just read my mind?" The question bubbled from Scott's lips before he could stop it, "I mean, I wouldn't know the difference." 

"Because you don't want me to," Piercing words that scattered around the air around him likes mines, daring him to wade deeper into the subject and risk setting one off. 

He was startled more than a little bit by her admission. He supposed what she said was true, but that left the question still floating in the air. How did she know? She still wasn't looking at him, so he couldn't see her face, "When did I ever say that?" 

"Scott, I'm a telepath," She replied in a matter-of-fact tone, "I've known since I first met you, that you don't want me in your head, so I stayed out." 

He was awed. He couldn't say with absolute certainty that if he was a telepath he would be able to stay out of the head of his best friend, no matter how moral he was. It had been almost three years since they first met, and they were finally having this conversation. It occurred to him that she was always willing to tell him this, but never once had he thought to ask, until now. They had never even approached the subject before, choosing to view each other through tinted glass, and leaving the things that no one wanted to talk about unsaid, like background music until it played into silence. 

"Isn't it ironic then," He said out loud, "That if I really am such a closed off ass, that my best friend is a telepath?" 

"My Mr. Summers, what strange friends you keep," She deadpanned, dropping in the last of the breadcrumbs and putting the bag in her pocket, "And I wouldn't say you are an ass. Most of the time." 

She sat up and brushed her hands off on her shorts, before turning to grin wickedly at him, lips curling slyly around her words, "And now, if you don't mind, I'm going to have a bite to eat." 

She climbed to a better spot on the tree, sat down and pulled out something packaged in a shiny wrapper from her other pocket. She unwrapped a chocolate chip granola bar and began to make a great show of smelling and holding it up for him to see. Scott scowled in her general direction, and her eyes danced with laughter, the backwards tango in five inch heels kind. 

"You said you didn't have any food!" He exclaimed. 

"I _said_ that I didn't bring anything for _us_ to eat. This is for me," Sometimes Scott could swear on all things holy that her purpose in life was to bait and torment him mercilessly, and the way she seemed to be enjoying herself immensely solidified the theory. 

"Marvel Girl, you've joined the side of evil!" Scott feigned a horrified gasp, settling into his familiar role, so they could exchange banter until one of them gave in. 

Jean just took a bite with great ceremony and pretended to be enjoying it like it was the best granola bar on earth. Scott had to admit she was a very convincing actress. That tiny sugar-filled bar of grain was looking more and more tasty and more and more tempting by the second, most especially when it was in her hands. Finally, he cracked. 

"Okay Jean, give me some," He demanded flatly. 

"What have you done for me lately?" She teased trying to keep the smile off her face. 

Scott searched around for an idea, but as it is with most times when one tries to prove a point, thinking of examples suddenly becomes difficult for some odd reason. Teasing Jean had mischievous, glittering eyes, hypnotic, he couldn't think straight for a moment. Someone had picked up an eraser and wiped his mind clean of coherent thought. Then the tree beside the oak they sat on caught his eye. It was gorgeous lotus tree standing there innocently enough, with flower laden branches stretched out invitingly. If he just inched out a little more and stretched out his arm a bit, he could probably snag one of the silver spattered pink flowers, and nobody would ever notice it was missing. The tree was so full of them surely no one would mind. Jean had made him do much worse things without even uttering a word. For every leaf there seemed to be a flower, and most perfect flowers at that. 

Jean watched him with thinly veiled interest leaping around in her emerald jewelry eyes as he snatched up one of the flowers on the neighboring tree. She barely suppressed a snicker as he put the flower behind his back, knowing full well she had already seen it. Then he climbed over to where she sat, sidled up beside her, and presented the single lotus blossom to her with an exaggerated flourish, and a flash of pearly whites. 

"Now you can't say I never do anything for you," She took the flower from him, hopelessly failing to contain her smile, and he was rewarded. 

"No, I suppose not," She was still smiling as she passed him half of the granola bar, and she couldn't exactly explain why. 

She carefully palmed the delicate flower, and they both ate in silence for a moment. The half bar of granola wasn't really as satisfying as he had hoped, but he was tremendously pleased with himself for finding a way to move next to her without being too obvious. He could quite construe why he felt that he needed to impress her. It was like trying to figure out the limits of the universe. It just was. He must show off. The universe goes on forever. Jean is beautiful. The grass is green. The sky is red. On earth as it is in heaven. Amen. He wondered vaguely if it was dark chocolate chips in this granola bar. 

"Does it ever bother you?" Scott finally asked, jumping from his speeding train of thought that was crashing before his eyes. 

"What?" 

"That I don't want you to read my mind," A little sarcastic voice inside him told him that this was indeed an even better topic of discussion. 

"A little," She admitted with a guilty grimace, if they were going to pull back the curtains of lies and find out everything underneath, she was going to have to tell the selfish truth, "Sometimes you are so distant, and it doesn't help that I can't see your eyes. But everyone's got a right to keep their private thoughts to themselves Scott." 

"But in theory, if you were allowed free access into someone's mind you wouldn't have to keep up your shields around them?" Scott continued, ignoring the voice and disregarding half of his brain while he was at it. 

"Yes, in theory. What are you getting at Summers?" Jean was always one to know that there is more to every story than what is being said. Now, if only she wasn't fixing him with a look that could make jelly stand perfectly still. She was yanking all his stepping stones out from under him. 

"Why don't you try reading my mind? Just once," He was tripping over his words now, and he decided he better say it before he lost his nerve and stumbled into a creek of uncertainty. 

She turned toward him in surprise and stared into the shades he wore, wishing she could see his eyes for sincerity instead of the ever impassive wall of red, "Are you sure that's what you want?" 

In truth, Scott wasn't quite sure of anything. There were a thousand things inside his mind that he didn't want her to know, but for some reason it didn't seem all that daunting when he was sitting so close to her. Something about her made him want to please her in any way he could, even if that meant baring his innermost thoughts. This sitting next to her thing had to be bad for him. It was frying his brain faster than an egg on a skillet. He had only changed his mind about a second ago, and didn't want to think about it for too long, incase he changed it back again. 

"Yes," He lied. 

He noticed a slight curl of her toes when she heard that word, the only outward sign of emotion. It sometimes irked him that she could channel all her feelings through her body like a lightning rod, so all she did was curl her toes. She was deliberately calm and stoic as she turned to face him, gathering her legs under her and gripping the branch with her ankles. She could be very sober when she wanted to, and sometimes he thought it might be his fault. Scott attempted the same position, but found it slightly less easy to balance. He ended up teetering perilously until he gripped the branch with both hands. He finally looked up to see Jean biting back a fit of laughter. Her serious mood was shattered. 

"Scott this is your last chance to back out," She said slowly, "I don't know how much I'll see, and how much I won't." 

Scott nodded his head yes in spite of himself. She inched closer to him until their knees were brushing together, and their faces were a few inches apart. He knew that her eyes were green from what he had been told, but he had never actually seen the color, just a greyish shade that only set an undefined outline. His glasses did not completely impede his capacity to see some colors, but they lessened its effect and made individual colors hard to decipher after awhile. It was like viewing Mt. Rushmore through a straw. The whole picture was entirely invisible, and adding it up in one's head was complicated, so the effect was lost. Slowly the grey orbs slid shut, and he decided he had better do the same. He felt her hands go up around his head, and was acutely aware of every touch. The pads of her thumbs brushed against his cheekbones, and her splayed fingers grazed his hair. The ghosts of touch were enough to set every nerve on fire. He was as nervous as a spoked horse, but slowly he began to feel a calm descend upon him. 

Then he felt what began as a tentative warm tingle in the back of his mind. She was being extremely careful as she waded in, and trying hard not to plunge in head first. First came one foot and then the other. This was different from the occasional telepathic command of the Professor in his brain. Jean was much more, delicate and personal. Her telepathy was almost sensual in the way she caressed the contours of his mind, gradually invading and finding no resistance. It was something unlike anything he had ever felt before, and Scott decided he rather liked the feeling, though he didn't really know if he was supposed to. 

He was just getting used to it, when he felt her physically and mentally stiffen. The strange sensation was pulling back, but it seemed that she was almost struggling to disentangle herself. He felt he should try to help her, but he didn't know how. The two of them both fought to regain control, and suddenly in a flash, the warmth subsided, and everything stopped. 

Scott finally opened his eyes to find himself staring straight into a pair of wide grey ones. He blinked slowly and realized that he was clutching her arms rather tightly. She made no move to pull away, and when he released her, she slowly dropped her hands. Her arms still bore the bruises of his touch, screaming to him in the clear finger sized marks that dotted along her forearms. They both sat for a moment, trying to get their bearings, staring wide-eyed, and breathing unevenly. 

Then it dawned on them both, at almost exactly the same moment, how close they were. Knees still brushed against knees, breath mingled with breath, and eyes never lost contact. There was only a couple inches and a fraction of a second between their lips. If one of them crossed the final distance . . . The thought managed to excite and petrify at the same time. Time stood still for a moment, but neither of them acted. When it became apparent that neither was going to risk it, awkwardness descended. They both turned away with flushed cheeks. Scott suddenly became busy with adjusting his glasses on the bridge of his nose, and Jean began to mess with her hair. It was an unspoken formality, the pluck of a violin chord, an invitation to a tango that would be quick to start and slow to end. 

Finally Scott broke the silence, "What just happened?" 

It took Jean a moment to figure out which event he was referring to, but after a pause she spoke, keeping her voice as even as possible, "It was a bit weirder than I expected. I've never actually focused on reading one person on purpose before, besides in my exercises with the professor. You started pulling me in, and I almost let you before I realized what was going on. I'm just glad I made it out, or we both could have been in a world of trouble." 

"I did?" He recalled that he had succumbed to the sensation, but he hadn't realized he was actually pulling her closer to his mind, "Are you alright," the question seemed stupid once spoken, but he wanted to make sure he hadn't done something to hurt the telepath. 

"Yes. I don't think you did it on purpose," A hint of a smile flirted with the lines of her face, "Do me a favor, and don't mention this to the professor." 

"You do realize that your trying to hide something from a telepath?" He chuckled to hide the fear for both of them. The professor wouldn't be very forgiving if he found out. 

"Oh, it can be done," She said with another enigmatic smile, "No guarantees though." 

Then before he had time to react she swung herself off the branch and was on the ground in the blink of an eye, "Your still 'it', Summers. Catch me if you can." 

Scott rose to her challenge and leapt down to chase after her. The gauntlet had been thrown. The floor had been cleared. The dance had begun. 

  


***

One of the things Charles Xavier had always disliked about the west side of the mansion, was that not enough sunlight reached his bedroom in the morning. The dark wooden paneling and navy blue color scheme made the whole room seem like one large foreboding dungeon where one wasn't allowed to touch anything, unless they wanted to suffer dire consequences. His maid had become accustomed to his request of have all the heavy blue curtains opened in the morning, and now did it without being asked. Then once he got up he would usually request to have his first cup of tea brought to him, and he would sit by one of the large floor length windows and watch as the day unfolded. Sometimes, when he got up early enough he would see the sun rising off to the east, but what he loved most of all was simply watching. Every day the apple trees would change just a bit and their cycle would continue until the fall. Different birds constantly quarreled, sang and prattled mindlessly, finding places to nest and raising families. Gardeners worked in the mornings, sprucing up the gardens, and then soundlessly left, making it easy to forget they were ever there, yet leaving lasting impressions on the greenery. Sometimes a dear or two would be grazing close to the mansion, and sometimes the morning brought him an entirely new surprise. 

This morning brought him the sight of two of his students, tearing around the orchard in a game of tag. Jean Grey, his first student was weaving around the trees, following every turn of his second student, Scott Summers. It was a black and white fox hunt, sketchy and hard to follow. The dogs and the horses kept changing hands with each tag, but the methods of the fox were all the same. Scott kept trying to throw her off by turning tight corners and sharply changing direction, taking sharp bends with the agility of elastic, but the redhead was keeping up with him, like a legion of hounds tangling around one person. Both of them were bottomless pits of energy and neither of them appeared to be tiring. Charles sat up a little taller to see better, and apparently he wasn't the only one. The man tending the orchard was also watching with interest. 

Scott and Jean had both led completely different, and equally troubling childhoods. Both of them had been labeled hopeless cases by people who didn't understand their mutations, until he had intervened. At the estate they flourished in each other's company and under Xavier's watchful eye. Since then he had taken in two more mutant students, one with a pair of wings, and another who they called Iceman with reason. Hank McCoy, his resident scientist was also a mutant, and the six of them, plus a small host of servants, were the sole occupants of the estate. 

Charles's eyes widened when he saw the single lotus blossom Jean was holding by the steam. The petals were being buffeted around, but the flower managed to stay perfectly intact and beautiful. It had almost slipped past his radar and gone unnoticed, like a symphony in a room full of noise, the melody never changes, but to those who never hear it, it may as well have never even been there. He had no doubts as to whom she had received it from. He knew it was only a matter of time before Scott and Jean realized each other in another light that extended beyond platonic friendship. Perhaps he'd always known they would, but he wasn't entirely to blame. Some things just are, no matter what one tries to do. They would have met in a different time, at a different place, but the connection would have been the same. Fire and Ice. The outcome was uncertain, but for now, he only hoped that Scott had been nice to the tree he took the flower from. 

He was startled abruptly from his thoughts when Jean took a nasty spill and fell to her knees in the grass. She clenched her teeth together and grabbed her ankle. Concern rippled across the older man's face. Scott also stopped immediately to see what was wrong, backtracking worriedly. He crept up to her, but she turned away, most likely insisting she was fine. Charles was about to wheel down and help her, when she swiftly tagged Scott and speed away in one fluid motion. Scott's jaw flipped open, and Charles could hear his shout from the window. 

"JEAN!!!" 

Charles laughed out loud. The redhead giggled and danced around on her toes for a moment, then made a mad dash towards the mansion, at a breakneck pace that seared the ground beneath her feet. Scott was not about to concede defeat. He scrambled after her. The professor shook his head knowingly and decided to meet the two downstairs when they arrived. Anger is a drug. Jealousy is a disease. Happiness just is. 

On his way down he was stopped by Robert Drake. The eleven-year-old boy was already knee deep in trouble, and it wasn't even eight o'clock yet. When he spotted the professor wheeling quietly down the hallway, he rushed up and attempted to duck behind him. He looked like he had just rolled out of bed. His blonde hair was tousled and sticking straight up in some places, and he was still dressed in his pajama shorts and T-shirt. The wide-eyed look of fear on his face was far from sleepy though. 

"Hide me!" He yelped, seeking to shield himself behind the metal wheelchair rather unsuccessfully. 

"What did you do?" The professor sighed, bringing his fingers up to massage the bridge of his nose. He felt a headache coming on already. 

"You mean, what did I do to Warren's toothbrush, or what did I do to Scott's bed sheets?" The blonde asked innocently hopping from foot to foot. 

"Both," Charles decided he wasn't really in any hurry, and prepared himself for the boy's response. 

"Well, I kinda took Scott's bed sheets and used them to make a twister board," He admitted. 

"A twister board?" Charles raised an inquisitive eyebrow. 

"Yes," In Xavier's presence the boy began to tell the exact details of his plan, unable to withhold the whole waterfall once he had let a drop free, "Well see, I was going to use _my_ bed sheets, but they weren't white, so I used Scott's. Except, Scott hasn't found out yet because he left early this morning. What's really bad is what happened with Warren." 

"What did you do to Warren?" Charles was almost afraid to ask. 

"Well as you recall, I had to clean the shower, so I used Warren's toothbrush to clean it," Bobby Drake would make a terrible secret keeper. He always had to share the plans for one of his incredible pranks with someone to show off his mastery, and today Charles Xavier was the lucky soul. 

"Does he know about this?" The lucky soul currently was wearing a disturbed look that suggested he wasn't feeling very lucky. 

"He just found out," Bobby said, glancing around and trying to duck behind the wheelchair again, "I'm done for." 

"Oh, I see," Charles said in a manner that suggested these occurrences happened every day, which in fact they did. 

A door on the end of the hall swung open violently. Charles winced at the sound of the doorknob connecting with the wall with a crunch that wasn't unlike the sound of breaking bones, thanked the lord that he didn't break the door hinges this time and watched the livid face of Warren Worthington III himself emerge from behind it, "DRAKE!!!! I'm going to wrap you in duct tape that stays sticky even in sub-zero temperatures, and tie you to the backside of a horse in full gallop!" 

"Oh, he sounds better than usual this morning," Bobby stated dryly, "Must be some of the cleaning fluid he swallowed." 

Warren would have actually been a very attractive specimen of the male variety if he didn't have a terrible, murderous glare smeared across his pretty face. He stomped out of his room, toothbrush in hand, with wings spread wide. Bobby cowered. 

"Move aside Charles, I must solve this like a civilized person and tear him limb from limb," Warren growled. 

"What if I make Bobby buy you a new toothbrush?" Charles offered hopefully. 

Bobby glared silently. He obviously hadn't planned for one of his pranks to end with him wasting money to reimburse people, but he was in no position to protest. 

"An electric one?" Warren asked. 

"Sure." 

"With two different colors and far reaching bristle action?" 

"Fine." 

"Okay, I won't kill him." 

"That's very kind of you," Charles sighed dryly. 

Satisfied that he had settled the first conflict of the day in a nonviolent way, Charles once again set forth to go downstairs. Little did he know that the innocent smile Warren was giving him, had turned into a malicious snarl again. He rounded on the younger boy very quietly, still waving around the toothbrush like a terrible weapon of war. Bobby tried to scream, but soon found himself smothered by a very vengeful angel. 

As he came out of the elevator, Charles heard the distinct sound of the front door closing. He was just in time to meet Jean and Scott. He entered the main hall, and stared around curiously. It was empty. That was rather odd. He wheeled in and looked around just to make sure, but still no one. There weren't many spaces where one could hide in the spotless hall, unless one could fit behind one of the potted plants. It seemed highly unlikely. 

He wheeled up and opened the front door, after looking around to make sure no one was there, he turned back around with a puzzled expression still written on his continence. Then slowly, he looked up towards the ceiling. The two teens he had been looking for smiled down at him innocently. 

"Hi professor," Jean said meekly, "What brings you down to the hall this fine morning?" 

Both of them were levitated up to the ceiling, courtesy of the impish redhead telekinetic. She had Scott's hand clasped in her own, and she appeared to be able to lift them both easily. Only Scott would trust her enough to let her lift him high off the floor without flinching. She was still retaining an innocent look, but Scott's 'we're busted' look was visible even behind his ruby quartz glasses. Both of them looked considerably disheveled from their game of tag, and the grass stain on Jean's knee stood out even brighter inside the mansion. 

"While you know I always appreciate you using your powers for practical situations and learning how to control them," Charles said to his two proteges, "In this instance I am getting the feeling that you are trying to hide something." 

"Hide?" They looked at each other and then down at the professor again like the word was foreign, "Professor, why would we want to hide anything?" 

"I don't know why would you?" Charles was a telepath, but he still had to admit these two students in particular could always beat him when it came to mind games. 

They looked at each other again, and Charles noticed how they were still shuffling their feet nervously, and trying to hide the soles of them, "Lets see your feet," he commanded. 

Jean sheepishly turned out one foot. It was stained a dark muddy green. He didn't have to see Scott's feet to know they were identical. They knew the game was up now. Slowly and carefully Jean first set Scott lightly on the ground, and then she descended herself. Except for the trip up at the end that caused her to fall on her butt and Scott to laugh, she preformed the feat perfectly. She smacked his leg, and with a less then gentle telekinetic shove she knocked him to the ground as well. She popped back up with as much grace as one can have after falling on their butt, and then the lotus blossom dropped into her palm from above. 

Charles waited for Scott to stand before addressing them. He finally found his feet and stood up next to Jean. Charles was startled. There had been a time when Jean and Scott were the same height, but now Scott stood taller than she by at least six inches. Though he would always be on the slim side, he was considerably more healthy than the skimpy blind boy with spindly popsicle stick legs and masking tape over his eyes that Charles had first taken in. He had added more muscle to his upper body and his limbs no longer looked like they would snap in half with the slightest touch. 

"May I ask exactly how many times the two of you have used the ceilings to sneak around?" Charles asked, fearing that he probably didn't want to know the answer. 

They looked at each other. Jean eyed Scott expectantly, and judging by tap of his foot he was giving her an equally expectant look. They had an argument of sorts, composed mainly of glances and sometimes glares, until their warring expressions finally came to an agreement. Charles couldn't quite understand if Jean could indeed see Scott's eyes, or if she was just a very good reader of facial expression. Scott cleared his throat and began to do some counting in his head. 

"You don't want to know professor," He said at last. 

Jean elbowed him, "What he means is that we don't do it very often." 

Scott adopted her answer and nodded his head furiously in agreement, "Yes, that's what I meant." 

"Has anyone ever told you that you are both terrible liars?" Charles said pointedly. 

"Yes, I believe I've heard that before," Jean's stance dropped and she began to stare at the floor like she had never encountered the wine red carpet before in her life. 

Charles shook his head, "I'm going to just take Scott's word I think. As for running around with no shoes on, and then tramping all over the carpet with feet such as those, I would think that both of you know better by now," They both nodded in mute agreement, and he continued, "The first order of business now is for both of you to go get cleaned up. Then Scott, you have a sheet to retrieve from Mr. Drake." 

"But sir," Scott looked confused, though his glasses masked a good portion of the look, "Aren't you going to punish us?" 

"You say that like you want to be punished Mr. Summers. Would you like to be punished?" Charles enjoyed the looks of shock on the faces of his pupils after he said that. 

"No!" Scott amended quickly. 

"Good, so don't do it again, and I won't have to do something you wouldn't like," With that he left, throwing over his shoulder, "And don't let me find any foot prints on the ceiling either." 

The boy and the girl exchanged a silent look of relief. Their most frequent hiding place had finally been discovered, but the professor couldn't keep an eye on them every second, especially at night when the kitchen was empty of people and full of snacks. 

Almost immediately after the professor disappeared, Warren appeared, bounding down the staircase two stairs at a time with the aid of his wings, and his robe flying out behind him like a cape. Jean and Scott watched him take the last five steps with a glide and come to rest neatly on the ground with his wings folded behind him. His eyes traveled back up the staircase expectantly, and seeing that he was safe for the time being, he flashed them a grin and smoothed back his hair. 

"Good morning," He said politely, as anyone of his family's standing would have been trained to do, addressing Scott casually with a nod, and giving Jean another dazzling white smile he saved just for the ladies that Scott would almost classify as a leer, "Blinkie, Ms Grey, I'd love to stay and chat, but unfortunately I must be going." 

Then he was speeding past them and out the front door before either of them had time to process what was going on. Moments later Bobby hobbled down the stairs practically mummified by silver duct tape. A glance passed from between them, green to red and back again, summoning smiles to the lips of the boy and the girl. Happiness just is, as are many other things. 

  


***

**Quick Note**: I do not claim to be an expert on X-Men by any means. I just recently got into the fandom so please forgive me for slightly remaking the timeline just a slight bit. I'm just an innocent little author doing what I love. Also, this fic has been complete for a very long time now, but I am posting parts on a monthly basis. I rarely start posting unless something is nearly complete. Look for the next part to come on the 12th. 

**Disclaimer**: I don't own X-Men 

**SA7** IceDragon5788@hotmail.com 


	2. Part II

  


**Whispered Word**

_"There is but one Phoenix_

I am my own

Daughter

Mother

Granddaughter

Grandmother

I was

My own midwife

Will be

My gravedigger

***

**Intro P2 - The Asylum _~Jean_**

***

  


It is a whispered word that jerks and jumps around the gears of your mind driving you mad. It means something. It means something you ought to know, but there are so many voices. Maybe one of them knows, or maybe nobody understands. Perhaps we are all going crazy. 

Someone –You? Him? Her? Them?– has turned off the light. It's hard to know when you aren't sure who falls into which category. They stand out in shadows. Only the stunted silhouettes of dark forms flicker in and out of visibility. You mind categorizes and arranges in much the same way. Paper thin outlines of things you once knew are filed, plastered to walls of your mind, tossed in heaps, soaking up the darkness like coffee filters and becoming transparent. 

Who you are is wrapped up in a thousand voices, swept away by the stampede, smothering coherent thought like thick white gauze. You are everybody, nobody, does it really make a difference anymore? They draw closer and your mind in the midst of a hurricane doesn't even remember what to feel. Should you be scared, angry, happy? A hand grabs you, rough, not intending to sooth or comfort. Your mind spasms forth a memory. Pain. Bad. Fight. 

You struggle wildly, deciding you definitely do not like them, but the darkness makes your battle blind. More hands seize, trying to hold you still, but that only makes you wrestle harder. Then a sharp crash, and glass shards glittering in the darkness like tiny diamonds. Did you do that? Something in your mind knows you did, it screams like a voice underwater, but how would you ever explain how? You'll drown the voice in the sea of all the others. You refuse to believe it's true, but the ocean is become shallower. The silence is unnerving. They'll never let you leave now, no matter how hard you fight. Something must come along to take you away from this place, but most of all, the monsters that exist in your own mind. 

The rest is hazy, pauses, dips, swirls, flying by in rapid succession, eased on by pain killers. Jesus comes. He's bald. You may have met Jesus before. You may have been Jesus before. Are you Jesus? No he is. Jesus is bald. Who was he again? The thoughts in your own mind don't even make sense anymore, and you can't piece them together fast enough. It's a porcelain vase broken five minutes before mom gets home. It'll never be perfectly fixed, and not nearly in enough time. You can't hide the pieces from mom, even if you shove them in that dark corner. You can't hide the pieces from Jesus. 

The whispered word still blows through your head in times like this. It is on the tips of a thousand tongues. You want to catch it and hang onto it because Jesus is beside you. He holds your hand, gentle, and speaks to you sometimes, but you can't even be sure if it's Jesus anymore. Part of you thinks he is a doctor, maybe a teacher, perhaps the president, or the king of some distant country. If he were Jesus, he would take you out of this place. 

Maybe that is the whispered word. Deliverance.   


***

**Part Two II**

***

It rained that night. During the afternoon the storm had rolled in and spit out a light drizzle. When the first raindrop hit Bobby in the nose, he announced it. Then he announced every other time a raindrop hit him. It was just enough to get everyone inside for the rest of the day. By the time everyone was ready for bed, it was no longer a drizzle, but a steady tapping reverberating through the walls of the entire mansion. The raindrops dashed through the heavens, spurred around by a light wind, and then came to earth, rippling in the lakes and streams, saturating every arduously worked on flower bed and adorning the blushing pink petals of the apple blossoms with a shimmering garnish of liquid lace. 

Scott had found his way to bed, but he didn't sleep. He lay awake in the dark. Sometimes the entire room lit up in a flash of lightning, but then he was cast back into darkness with only the crack of thunder to let him know he was alive. The rain was now pounding a rhythm into every wall of the mansion, and his thoughts latched onto this rhythm, lacing through his mind at a steady beat. His first thought was more of a pondering to chew on. What did the flood that covered the entire world sound like? The rain was coming down in sheets, and in his mind he was beginning to envision a completely waterlogged estate in startling detail. The rational side of his brain told him that this was impossible, but the thought refused to leave him be. If one gets to thinking about these things when they're lying all alone in their bed they can very easily frighten themselves with almost anything, so he decided not to think about that anymore. 

Then he settled on the real problem, why he couldn't sleep. The nightmares. He used to have them all the time at the orphanage, and then when he moved to the mansion they became less frequent, but they never vanished entirely. He still remembered the time when his powers first manifested, and it stained his thoughts like wet paint. Then there were the nightmares of the beatings he took from Jack O'Diamonds that never escaped recollection. Then there were the other ones that were just plain scary. He'd wake up drenched in cold sweat, shaking and twitching, and more often than not, he could never remember what they had been about. Sometimes he just didn't want to go to sleep. Anything to avoid the phantoms that lurked through his dreams. 

There was one dream in particular, that rattled him the most, and he would wake up shaken and cold with the memory of it. It was the first dream he had without color, and it was a dream about a boy, with light hair and light eyes, standing by the edge of a dark river, black in his distorted vision like a running pool of ink, and he was filling his pockets with stones. 

It was more real than any of his other dreams had been. He could see and remember every freckle on the boy's face, every wrinkle in his clothing, every line of hair in staggering detail uncommon to dreams, and he didn't even know the boy. He could smell the river, becoming louder and louder and the still boy waded barefoot to its edge, turning to look at him, with vacant, troubled eyes. And the sky was blood red overhead with hanging clouds glowering down like impending doom. Resolutely the light eyed boy stepped into the water, past his knees, past his waist, past his shoulders. He wanted to call out, wanted to stop the boy, but he was rendered inexplicably mute, rooted to the spot where he stood. When the water rose above the boy's head, suddenly _he_ was the light haired, light eyed boy drowning the middle of a dusky river, with stones in his pockets. The river turned blood red, like the sky, like the rest of his world with fleeting glimpses of colors he once recognized, flashing by too quick to be grasped. The boy was screaming. He was screaming. Water filled his mouth and lungs. Color turned into light and sound, exploding before his eyes. Damp. Heavy. Cold. Sinking. 

He never woke until he was sure he had died. 

He couldn't mention the nightmares to anyone else. It was all too easy to hide the bags under his eyes with his glasses. When he came down to breakfast and clutched his coffee cup so tightly his fingers turned chalk white, to keep his hands from trembling, everyone pretended like they didn't notice or if they did, they never spoke of it for fear of what would happen to them if they asked. The professor knew, like any telepath would, and offered him all sorts of solutions to his problem, from therapy, to medication, to new sleeping arrangements, but none that Scott was very eager to accept. Soon Charles Xavier discovered that you can lead a thirsty horse to all the water in the world, but you can't make it drink. Scott refused to believe that he was helpless and wouldn't let anyone within arms distance of him when it came to his problems. There was no doubt Jean knew that something was wrong as well. The silent accusation in her eyes after he spent another sleepless night in silence, spoke louder than words. He wanted to tell her. He wanted to tell her everything, but he couldn't run the risk of her thinking him weak, so he suffered in silence. 

Another low note of thunder roared over the hammering rain bringing his mind back to the present. His eyes flickered wide open and began to wander aimlessly through the dark room. The shadows were all dyed red, the color of blood, the color of his dreams. He no longer dreamt in color. Despite the clamor of the storm raging outside the whole room felt strangely silent, too silent. He could hear himself think in sharpened clarity, and torrents of thoughts plummeted and bounced off walls like balls in a pinball game. He would not be sleeping tonight. There would be no blood red dreams to fight the repercussions of. 

He pushed the sheets, which now bore the vivid images of brightly colored twister dots, off of him and sat up. When he had procured his sheets from the young master of ice, the damage had already been done, in bright permanent paint. The professor promised a new pair of sheets by tomorrow at Bobby's expense. Leaning back against the headboard of his bed he closed his eyes and lifted his glasses off his nose. Setting them beside him carefully, he began to massage the bridge of his nose and the areas behind his ears. A long sigh escaped him, and he wondered idly how to pass his time until morning. He reasoned with himself that it was in his best interest to get some sleep and not have to face Jean in the morning, but he couldn't. 

Jean. She was an entirely new bag of problems dropped at his feet. Their friendship had started out so innocently. They were mutual sufferers of society's intolerance towards those who were different, and thus, they formed a bond almost instantly. He was always being teased by the others because his best friend was a girl, but he knew it was their jealousy talking. One would have to be blind not to notice Warren's crush on her and Bobby's long stares. He had always considered himself above falling for her, and now, only a few hours ago, he had almost kissed her, his best friend. The terrible thing about it came when he realized how badly he had wanted to kiss her. It was absurd. He tried desperately to deny it, but the more he thought about it, the more he wished he had done it. Just to see what it was like. That was all. Right? The excuse sounded stupid even in his own mind. 

He didn't even know why he let her enter his mind. Lately it was becoming a task to think clearly in her presence, and at the time the idea seemed selfless and golden. He hadn't even thought of what could happen if something went wrong. He didn't want her to have to put up shields around him, and he figured if he could expose his mind to her a little bit at a time she wouldn't have to. Now that he was alone, he realized that he was afraid she would know his guilty thoughts about her. She would realize that he was just a silly boy who saw an Armageddon sky every time he looked up, who had dreams of drowning with stones in his pockets. He supposed it was just as well that it hadn't worked out, and yet, he couldn't help but feel that something still wasn't entirely right. It was a pea in the bedsprings of his thoughts. He knew it was there, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it. It was almost like he could still feel the touch of her mind. But that was impossible. He shook off the thought. 

Aimlessly, he rolled out of bed and put his glasses on again. The rain was still pounding tirelessly against his walls and windows with all the shades drawn. A flash of lightning lit up everything, and nipping at its heels came the thunder. He decided he could always sneak down to the kitchen and find something to eat. He traversed the floor of his bedroom, light as a cat, opened the door and slipped quietly out into the hallway. 

The sound of the rain was amplified considerably out in the deserted hallway, but the hall lights were on making it easier to see. He slunk towards the stairs soundlessly and scamped down them two at a time. He made his way in the direction of the kitchen wondering when he would spot her. Jean always accompanied him on missions such as this, and if he tried to go alone, she had a way of just sensing he was awake and appearing behind him moments later. He didn't spot her this time. 

Suddenly he stopped and listened. There was a sound coming from the west side of the mansion. He decided to drop his current quest and follow the noise. It soon became apparent that the noise was a song. The crystal clear melody traipsed over the sound of the rain outside, settling in his ears and leading him onward. He passed through a series of dark wood paneled corridors with the song always five steps in front of him. Finally, he found himself in the drawing room, and there he spotted her. 

The drawing room was a large room with ornate carpet and decorations. Various pictures hung on the wall, and the few couches that were scattered across the floor looked far too expensive to touch, much less sit down on. The back wall had a line of floor length windows going across it, all covered halfway with costly white drapes. The only light was coming from a small desk lamp that was placed on a table in the corner. The whole room looked like the set of an old painting except for the music. It slowly wound its way around every object, so that Scott could almost taste the color of the room even if it still appeared in shades of red to his eyes. 

Jean was barely visible behind the massive black piano she was seated at. Her eyes were downcast in concentration, so she did not see him at first. He was about to back out and leave before she noticed him, but her eyes snapped up and locked on his figure leaning in the doorway. The music stopped abruptly. 

"Scott. Am I keeping you awake?" A simple question with so many double meanings, spoken so innocently. 

Scott decided to play it casual, leaned on the doorframe with a nervous grin and crossed his arms nonchalantly, "No, you can't hear it from upstairs. I . . . just couldn't sleep," at the saddened look on her face he quickly altered his excuse with a shift of his arms, "I mean, the storm and all . . . kinda loud. Just thought I'd take a walk and stuff and . . ." He shrugged his shoulders and stopped when he began to trail off. 

"Well, you don't have to stand around lurking in doorways, come in." 

He stepped in and came to stand behind her, "Finish the song." 

"Fine," She stretched out her fingers and placed them back on the keys. 

Then the same intriguing song he had heard coming in started up again. He was entranced, not by the song, but by the way her hands glided effortlessly over the keyboard, pouring forth a melody from her fingertips like that's what they had always been made to do. She was playing it by memory. There was no music in front of her, and even if there was it would have been hard to read it in the dim lighting, but it sounded perfect and important. In places he could actually follow the movement of her fingers, but when the song became too fast, their dance slurred into fluid motions and became too hard to follow, leaving him only to marvel at the complexity. 

Ever since the Professor had sat Jean at a piano, she had been a natural. He told her it would be important for her to learn to do two things at once, and playing the piano would be good for her. It had been, but not just for her. He had heard that particular song before. The thunder was still throwing a tantrum outside, but its cries were drowned in the song and became easier to ignore. Her fingers finished their gentle waltz across the keys and played out the last notes. Then she turned to look at him. 

"Mozart's Rondo Alla Turca," She almost whispered, "It's one of my favorites." 

"I don't know music," Scott admitted, "Well . . . classical music anyway, but it was pretty." 

"I didn't expect you to," She said simply, "I just thought I'd take your mind off whatever is bothering you." 

Scott felt slightly affronted by her bold assumption, but he realized that it wasn't really an assumption. It was obvious. Then he noticed that she wasn't dressed for bed at all, nor did she look like she planned on sleeping any time soon. He decided it was a good way to change the subject. 

"Well, we've already talked about why I'm awake. How about you tell me why you're not in bed?" It was dodging her subtle charge, but she let it slide. 

"The professor left this evening, and I want to be here when he gets back," She let her fingers mindlessly peruse the tops of the keys as she spoke, "He's bringing someone back." 

"Someone, as in a student?" Scott asked. 

"I don't know. I'm guessing that is the case, and I want to be there when they arrive," She was beginning to lightly trace another melody of another song she knew by heart with her fingertips. 

"Why didn't you tell me?" Scott couldn't keep the irritated tone out of his voice. 

"I was hoping you would finally get some sleep tonight," She sighed and looked all around the dark room, anywhere but at him, "Since that isn't the case . . ." 

"You don't need to worry about me, Marvel Girl," He said, sliding down to sit beside her on the bench, "Just play that song," He gestured vaguely toward her vagrant fingertips. 

A thin smile formed on her lips and another song flowed from her fingers drenching the keys in a deep resonant melody that Scott knew for a fact he had heard before. It was a pretty song, the kind that played in a high digital sounding pitch inside jewelry boxes, sometimes accompanied by dancing ballerinas, but played on the piano the song changed from a simple pretty tune into a religion. The rhythm was plumper, deeper, stronger, filling the entire room and the rooms beyond that. The song was bound to her heartstrings, and it showed in the way her whole body kept time with her hands in the wordless, nameless song that could almost bring one to their knees. 

The rain was reduced now to a softer drumming, and the thunder was dwindling into indignant grumbles. The drawing room windows showed only the last remaining raindrops tumbling from the edges of the roof and into the blackness of the night. A peaceful silence was descending over the night, with a song filling in the cracks, broken only by the distant keening of thunder, and something else. 

Her eyes jerked up from the piano. She heard it too. The song faded on her fingers, and they came to rest on the keys as if she had completely forgotten they existed. The spell broke with the off-key twang of neglect, and Scott also began to look around. There was defiantly a whimpering sound coming from somewhere mixed with a peculiar scratching noise. 

Jean was softly on her feet before Scott could blink, and the look of concentration on her face told him everything he needed to know. She could feel whatever it was in her head. 

"What is it?" He whispered. 

She crept towards the windows on her toes and held up a hand for him to be quiet, "It's coming from over here." 

He watched from a safe distance while she located the latch and swung one of the windows wide open. Then she climbed halfway out the window and began searching the surrounding bushes. He let his eyes wander nervously around the room and decided that one of the paintings on the wall depicting a hunting scene was of great interest and definitely worthy of closer inspection. He stood anxiously rocking from foot to foot, studying the painting and occasionally chancing a glance towards the window that his friend was still dangling halfway out of. 

Jean continued to search the wet bushes for the source of the noise. She could feel distress in stereo, amplified severely in her head, scalding her senses with its intensity. She pushed another branch out of the way, and it snapped back to whack her in the face. A shriek of pain crawled up her throat a dug its claws in when a particularly sharp branch sliced through the skin on her check with a sharp prickling sting, but she swallowed it back, letting only a hiss of pain escape her clenched teeth. She made a renewed effort with the aid of her TK and held aside the branch. Then she saw it. 

It was a trembling mass of blackish grey that resembled a wadded up dishrag. She almost didn't see it at first, curled up in a little ball against the bottom of the window, still keening and whimpering very softly. She tentatively reached out a hand and gently stoked what looked like its back with a finger. It squeaked and gave in to a violent shudder of surprise, but then it seemed to calm a bit. Its fur was matted, soaking wet and littered with bits of dirt and wood chips. Carefully she slid her hands around the little trembling bundle and picked it up. 

Scott finally saw Jean reemerge from the window with a little squirming mass of black fur that looked like a rather large drowned rat. His eyes flew to her face, and he spotted the cut from the branch that marred the side of her face instantly. Blood was already starting to spill from it like crimson tears. He wanted nothing more than to tend to her immediately, but as it was, the drowned rat in her arms was of greater importance at the moment. 

"Jean!" He almost shouted, "What is that?!" 

Before she could speak the little furball yipped and wriggled more in her arms, sticking out its tiny black paws. She sat down on the carpet and set the muddy creature in front of her, without regard to the upholstery. She soothed some of the wood chips out of its fur, and then Scott noticed a little face, with floppy ears, a wet nose and wide black eyes. A puppy. 

"I think, a black lab," Jean said plainly, as if he was the stupidest person on earth for not knowing. 

"Where did he come from?" Scott sat down in front of her to get a better look at the animal. 

The puppy had now rolled on its stomach as was sucking lightly on her fingers. Jean laughed slightly and shook her head, "I have no idea. _She_ must belong to someone." 

"She?" 

"Yes she," Jean gave him another look, that made him feel stupid for speaking, "What do you suppose her name is?" 

"We can't keep her Red! You know that," Scott admonished softy noting the look of attachment for the puppy Jean was already donning, "The professor would never hear of it." 

"I wasn't suggesting that we keep her," Jean shot back quickly, "I was just thinking we ought to take her out of the rain and clean her up a bit. Then we can try and figure out who she belongs to." 

"What if she belongs to no one? I mean, there isn't another house around here for miles," Scott had to admit that now with the puppy rolling around lazily on the floor playing with Jean's fingers, he was also starting to become attached, even if the smell of wet dog wasn't entirely pleasant. 

"And what if she does and her owners are looking for her?" Jean protested, "How else would you explain a stray puppy wandering here?" 

"Well, we might as well get her cleaned up. No point in getting the carpet any dirtier than it already is," Scott said sensibly. 

Jean rolled her eyes and gently picked up the puppy again, "Okay, led on oh fearless protector of carpeting." 

"Well, I think we should use my bathroom. Nobody will come into my room wondering what's going on," Scott led the way out of the drawing room choosing to ignore Jean's comment, "And remember you're the one that found her. You are going to explain her to the professor. Not me." 

"So says you now," Jean giggled, marching after him. 

"Yeah," Scott scowled, "So says I." 

The rain had mostly dissipated now and the only sounds left were the lulling tickles of rainwater plunging from the trees onto the roof of the estate and gurgling in the gutters. The night had become mostly quiet again, so the two teens had to take great care to be absolutely silent on their way up the stairs and past occupied rooms. They had almost made it safely into Scott's room when the puppy made a playful noise and started to try and eat Jean's hair that was spilling over her shoulders and into her mouth. 

Scott spun around and hissed at Jean to be quiet. Jean hissed back that the puppy did it, and began to silently scold her. She tried to extricate her hair from the puppy's jaws, but this only made her whimper louder. The two teens gave each other equally exasperated looks, shared a moment of panicked pantomime while trying to agree what to do and finally broke into a run, crossing the rest of the distance to Scott's room fairly quickly. 

Scott reached the door first and flung the dark wooden antique open hastily, causing it to collide with a dresser sitting adjacent to it against the wall with a resounding smack, creating more noise then they began with. He hopped back furiously and almost stumbled, spurting curses under his breath when the door rebounded back and sent needles of pain dancing through his foot like flames. Jean winced. The puppy chirped again. Through the grey spots that were forming in his vision as a result of the pain, Scott grabbed Jean's arm and pulled her into the room just in time. The door at the end of the hall opened only seconds later. 

Warren emerged from his room with the last dregs of sleep still clinging to his eyes. He spotted Scott and advanced on him through the dim haze of his sleep-clogged vision. Scott frantically shoved Jean and the puppy behind the insolent door in the space next to the dresser, out of Warren's sight. Then he stepped out into the hall to confront him, still hopping on one foot and trying not to start cursing. 

"Dude Blinkie," Warren's normally proper aristocratic drool was sandpaper with his lack of sleep, "What's with all the smashing and barking in the middle of the night man?" 

"I was just going to get a glass of water and then I banged my foot against the door," Scott pretended like he had just gotten up and faked a large yawn, "Though I can't explain the barking. You might wanna ask Bobby about that." 

"Good thinking dude," Warren nodded sleepily, "You never know what's going with that one. I'll go check it out and report back to you." 

"No!" Scott said a little quicker than he meant to, "I mean, please don't. I'll probably be back to sleep by then and I don't wanna be woken up by your banging on that godforsaken door." 

"Alright then, you just show that door who's boss, and I'll report to you in the morning," Warren continued to stand there long after Scott thought he was done, and it was beginning to annoy him. 

"Well, are you gonna go see what's up with Bobby or something?" Scott tried his best to mask his impatience, but his resolve was crumbling. 

Finally, the idea seemed to penetrate Warren's sleep fogged brain, "Oh, right dude. I'll go do that." 

As he shuffled away towards Bobby's room Scott let out the breath he didn't realize he had been holding. He didn't know which was worse, the unnatural amount of times Warren used the word 'dude' when he was half asleep, or that he hadn't been the slightest bit suspicious when Scott said he had got up to get a drink of water, even though there was a facet in his room. 

He slide back into his room soundlessly and closed the door to reveal Jean still holding the little black puppy in the corner snickering softly, "I had no idea you like polka-dots." 

Scott's mouth opened and closed a few times in puzzlement and then he remembered the cryptic painting scrawled across his bed sheets. He sighed and brought a finger to his lips indicating for her to be quiet, and then led her towards the back of the room where the bathroom was located. 

"You can put the dog in the tub I guess," Scott said upon closing the bathroom door behind them, "Just hang on." 

He began to hurriedly sweep all the various bottles and soaps out of the way and into a pile on the floor. Soon the bathtub was sparkly clean and devoid of all objects. The pile on the floor beside the bathtub had grown to monstrous proportions, so Scott shoved it a little further out of sight and pretended like it didn't exist. Jean watched with amusement, but she didn't say a word throughout the whole procession. 

Finally, Scott made a sweeping gesture with his arms towards the tub, signifying that he was done with his task. Jean plopped the puppy down in the center of the tub, and she immediately began to romp around with curiosity, trying to figure out what to make of the slippery ivory surface. Scott turned on the facet, and that produced a startled bark out of her. 

"Is it okay if she starts barking like that?" Jean asked with a hint of trepidation clinging to the corners of her words. 

"Yeah," Scott replied calmly, watching the black lab lope to the far edge of the tub in attempt to escape the small flow of water, "My bathroom in pretty sound proof, especially with the water running." 

Much to the puppy's dismay and the humans' entertainment, she slipped and slid on her back while trying to crawl up the side of the tub, and drifted right into the water. Then she discovered that the water was not at all cold and unpleasant feeling like the storm she had been trapped in. It was warm, and the giant pool that was now forming was a source of limitless entertainment. She began to merrily bound about in the oversized puddle, delighting in the huge splashes that resulted, completely oblivious to the fact that the majority of the water was splashing out of the tub and drenching the two humans kneeling beside it. 

Jean finally got her hands around her and held the little ball of energy still while Scott tried to soak off all the mud. The dog continued to twitch with excitement as the two humans worked the debris out of her liquid ebony fur, and decided that this knew pursuit must be some sort of game. She wiggled away from their reach and happily romped around the bathtub still making little yipping noises. 

A considerable amount of time passed before she was adequately cleaned off, in which the majority of the surface area of the bathroom floor became waterlogged and slippery, Scott and Jean got practically soaked to the skin, and the puppy couldn't have been happier. The soft lights of the bathroom glittered in the pools of water on the floor and simmered into a blissful damp haze around the three soaked beings. The only thing remotely unpleasing about the atmosphere was the ever-present smell of wet dog, permeating the fresh smelling air, but that could be ignored. 

Scott turned off the faucet. Jean grabbed one of the fuzzy blue towels hanging on the rack to dry the puppy off, but Scott shouted in protest, so in the end they used a small white towel that was lumped at the bottom of the stack. During the argument over which towel to use, the black lab puppy had worked up such a curiosity about the way the water was swirling and syphoning into the drain that she began to creep over towards it, nose first. 

Needless to say, when the towel came down upon her without warning, she was quite surprised. She was dragged out of the tub still squirming like a fighter, tongue hanging out, tail wagging, trying to nip the hands pulling her away from the mesmerizing drain. She was finally stationed on Scott's counter top, and Jean dried her, while Scott dried the floor. They worked in silence for a few moments that stretched into an eternity, each completely absorbed in their own task. Finally, Jean cleared her throat and sliced through stagnant air with a question. 

"What should we call her?" Jean asked innocently, working to towel off each paw, while the puppy skittered around the counter top making the job almost impossible. 

"Nothing," Scott said dismissively from his position trying to mop up the water on the floor, "That's the way you'll get attached to her." 

"Well we can't just call her 'dog'!" Jean quipped, turning from her task to put her hands on her hips, ratty towel still in hand and now covered in dog fur, "Lighten up Mr. Grumpypants." 

"Why not?" Scott asked artlessly sitting up to look at her, "'Dog' seems like a good name to me." 

"Scott!" Jean groaned, throwing the towel at his head. 

Scott let the towel slip down his face, from where it nailed him in the forehead, to his lap. Then he clenched it in his first, still spitting towel fibers and dog fur. His friend was still standing there leaning against the counter wearing a very satisfied smirk. 

"Nice one Red," he growled sardonically. 

He glared at her, and was ready to chuck it back at her again when he noticed the cut on her cheek for the second time. His fists relaxed automatically. It was still as red as ever, or blackish in his case, and perfectly neat, like someone had purposefully ran a nail from the top to the bottom of her cheek instead of an angry bush attack. The blood was smeared now, as a result of her squabble with him over the towel and being recently soaked. All of a sudden a he felt the guilt rise up inside him, creating a painful swell in his chest. He hadn't even asked her about it yet. 

"What?" Her voice broke through his thoughts, and he realized he must have been staring. 

His cheeks flushed with embarrassment. With a nervous smile he ran a finger across his cheek, indicating the cut on her own, "Are you okay?" 

"Yeah," Jean muttered anxiously sweeping some of her hair behind her shoulders, "It doesn't really hurt anymore." 

"Let me see it," Scott stood up, tossing the towel aside into the heap of bottles and soaps next to the tub, "You really need to clean it." 

She stood her ground with her arms crossed over her chest to convince him of the verity in her words, but when he reached out to touch the cut she flinched away. He cornered her against the counter with his body, and her hands flew up pushing him away. 

"Don't touch it," Her voice quivered, "I'm fine." 

"Jean," Scott spoke her named so delicately, as if he was scared the word would break and his world would be shattered into a million pieces that had once been four letters, and gently grabbed her wrists moving her hands out of the way, "Just let me see it." 

"Scott . . . " She pleaded softly, unable to finish the sentence as the words died on her lips. 

Suddenly all other sounds seemed to wither and die in the parching whirl of emotions that had swelled up between the two of them. Words were not enough to crack the quiet, and every last one perished before ever reaching their lips, falling witness to a silence that they could never break. Her hands fell to her sides of their own accord. He was emboldened by her reaction. 

Scott's fingertips brushed against the skin of her cheek again, but she did not flinch. He started by tracing the outline of her jaw and then leisurely worked his way upwards, towards the bright red gash. Her breath caught in her throat, though she could not quite explain why. The silence whispered things in her ears, things she had been denying for longer than memory could sustain, things she did not want to hear, but one covert look at him through her eyelashes, and she knew it was all true. He was leaning even closer into her personal space. She gulped. This was replaying the events of the morning all over again. She never even felt it when he finally stroked a lazy finger down the length of her cut, she just lost herself in the terrifying sensation of it all. She was lost. He was lost. The bathroom was completely silent. 

He felt her tense up and assumed at first that it was because of pain, but then he noticed her staring straight into his glasses and finding his unseen eyes dead on. The color green had never looked so vivid in all his life. The silence crackled between them, and he knew that this was his chance to see exactly what his best friend tasted like after waiting forever. She was practically inviting him to do so with that enticing stare. His hand had unexpectedly crept down to cup her chin, and his body threw caution and his mind to the wind, drawing her nearer to him senselessly. 

The rapture of the moment was exhilarating. She stood up higher, bracing herself on the counter with trembling hands, and he leaned in lower, drawing her nearer with the gentlest tugs of his fingertips. Nothing was going to stop this now. It had been coming for years, pulling forward, never ceasing, drawing them inexplicably together with a force as undeniable as gravity until they orbited each other perilously just waiting for the crash. 

When there were mere millimeters of air separating them there was indeed a crash, followed by a loud thud and a yelp, earsplitting to the silence, slashing it in half like butter. Their eyes flickered open dazedly at first as if the disturbance had only half registered. Then Scott returned to awareness first and leapt backwards guilty, fearing that somehow they had been caught in the act, and half expected that if he turned around or glanced in the mirror he would find the Professor or Dr. McCoy standing behind them with a disapproving look. Jean was quicker to grasp what had really happened. She whirled around towards the counter and found that the puppy had slipped off of it, bringing with her a breakable soap dish that had smashed when she hit the ground. Now, she was yipping frantically and scratching at the closed door as if she had become possessed by her fall. 

"Professor," Understanding hit her in a wave, "He's back." 

At the word professor Scott twitched again, but with the end of her sentence he relaxed. Jean was already racing out of the bathroom before he could blink, and he scurried after her to catch up. They failed to notice the black puppy still tailing them. 

Warren, who was just walking back to his room in a very disgruntled state after being told by Bobby that he didn't have to slightest clue what was going on, was surprised to say the least when he saw Jean Grey dash out of Scott's room, followed closely by Scott himself. He watched silently, blinking a few times to make sure he wasn't imagining the little black blur that was following Scott, and told himself some things are not meant to be understood. 

They reached the entrance hall just in time to run right into the Professor, who was escorting a very timid looking new student into the mansion. To say she was striking would be an understatement. The girl peering around nervously at Charles's side was beautiful, with stark white hair and crystal blue eyes that sharply contrasted her dark skin. She was about their age, give or take a few years, judging by looks of her. Her lips were parted in awe as she gazed around the inside of the house, and it was only when Jean and Scott skidded right up to her that she turned her gaze to them. 

"Ah," Said the professor with delight, taking their sudden intrusion in stride, "Here are some of you classmates now. Ororo Munroe, meet Jean Grey and Scott Summers." 

The Ororo's lips formed a thin line, and she addressed them both with a nod and a dismissive, "Hello" obviously she wasn't entirely convinced that she wanted to be there. 

Then the white haired girl returned to gazing and pacing with a slight frown on her face, completely ignoring Scott and Jean's attempts at greetings. For all the ignoring she did, they studied her curiously, trying to figure out what sort of power she could possibly have. 

Then the puppy came running in and began to frolic around Jean's legs. The redhead turned pale in an instant, when everyone else spotted her. She had completely forgotten about the puppy, and now she was bouncing around, mostly dry, with her little tail wagging back and forth excitedly. Scott began to stare at his feet silently denying involvement, and if it was at all possible Jean turned paler still when the puppy boldly trotted over to the professor's wheelchair, and began to sniff the newcomer curiously. 

"Oh!" All three of them looked up quickly at the unexpected sound of Ororo's voice, "You have a puppy!" 

A grin spread across her face and she dropped down to her knees and beckoned the lab towards her. The puppy did not object and romped merrily over to the next newcomer. Ororo seemed to be right at home now that she was cheerfully cuddling the energetic puppy, who was trying at every opportunity to lick her face. 

"I suppose we do," Said the professor slowly, eyeing Jean and Scott steadily as he spoke the words. 

The platinum haired girl evidently hadn't even noticed the interaction and continued right along, "So what's her name?" 

The professor waited with interest for one of them to speak up, but they both stood for a few moments with their mouths opening and closing rather like beached fish. Thankfully, they were spared for the moment when Warren slumped down the stairs muttering indiscernible things under his breath, looking considerably ruffled. 

"Warren," The professor smiled pleasantly, "So good of you to join us. I was just introducing our new student Ororo Munroe. Ororo, this is another one of your classmates, Warren Worthington." 

"The third," Warren reminded him, trying to smile widely at Ororo and doing a poor job of it. 

Then his eyes turned into saucers when he caught sight of the dog Ororo was petting. The black creature trailing Scott did in fact exist, and nobody seemed to care too much about it. He was about to say something, but he was quickly cut off by the professor before he began. 

"Warren, could you please help me carry Ororo's stuff up to her room?" The professor asked indicating towards a single well sized suitcase sitting in the middle of the floor, "I'm sure everyone must be exhausted from staying up this late." 

Warren shrugged and shouldered the suitcase without complaint, and the professor led him towards the elevator. Ororo reluctantly gave up the puppy and followed them. 

Jean turned to Scott and put her hands on her hips, "I think that was the professor's way of saying we should go to bed . . ." 

Scott nodded at her, but remained standing exactly where he was. 

". . . but you're not," Jean finished slowly, raising her red tinged eyebrows. 

"What are you? My mother?" Scott glowered, "I'll go to bed whenever I want." 

"Not on my watch," Jean's voice became dangerously low, "It's nearly two o'clock in the morning, and I am not just going to stand by and pretend like I don't notice you staying up all night again." 

Jean led the way, and a very bewildered Scott followed her back up the stairs. She ushered into his room, and Scott waited for her to shut the door in his wake, leaving him alone, but she stepped inside and sat down on his bed as if it was the most natural thing to do. He stared at her in puzzlement. 

"Your not getting off the hook that easily," She laughed, shutting the door soundly with her TK. 

He continued to give her a speechless look, so she continued, "Now, you have to lay down." 

They stared each other down, Jean from her position on the bed, and Scott, from his stance across the room, each determined not the be the first to back down. She wanted him on the bed, but somehow Scott didn't think that having Jean in his bed would make him think sleepy thoughts at the present moment. The situation seemed downright dangerous, but he knew he had already lost the battle. It was only a matter of time before she got him over there. The puppy, who had somehow found her way into the room, hopped onto the bed hopefully wagging her tail. 

"Well, at least _somebody_ can take directions," Jean glared across the room at him. 

With a little telekinetic pull that rose in his fingers like static electricity, Scott found himself walking towards the battered graffiti covered sheets, and before he knew it, he had plopped down on the other side of the bed. The puppy had settled down against one of the pillows, and was beginning to doze off, but she was still regarding them curiously through one half open eye. 

Jean was smirking at him, "You have to lay down and relax." 

She crawled over and placed both her palms on his chest. Then she pushed him lightly into a horizontal position, and Scott was anything but relaxed. She was leaning over him in the darkness of his room, red hair spilling everywhere, with her palms still on his chest and her eyes burning a hole through his glasses, bottling the silence and making it her own. He was in trouble. 

She realized seconds later that it was a taught line she was venturing across and hastily she snapped it back into place, pulling her hands away, only to replace them around his head, in the same position she had when she had ventured into his mind, "Scott, you have to relax if this is ever going to work. I'm not going into your mind, I'm just trying to help you sleep." 

He tried to obey her, but his mind locked and his muscles clenched into rigid uncertainty, partially due to her close proximity and partially because of the results of her last attempt to do something like this. Then an almost surreal sense of peace hit him out of nowhere and drifted into his thoughts, melding with them so he couldn't tell the distinguish between the two. He fought to keep his eyes open but it was no use, sleep covered him like a blanket within moments, and not a single dream flitted through his lazy mind. 

Almost immediately after Scott's soothed breathing started, the same peace invaded Jean's mind, sizzling back across the two way link that was being born. Drowsiness hit her in a tranquil wave of serenity, pulling at her eyelids until they became too heavy to bear. The strange chemical reaction was not entirely unwelcome. Without thinking, she sank down onto the bed and slipped into the oblivion of slumber. 

  


***

**Quick Note**: Thank you to everyone who reviewed. I wasn't even going to post the next part until I saw your responses. I wrote this a long time ago and when I read it over it sounded terrible. Look for the next post on the 12th. Till then, school's keeping me busy. 

**Disclaimer**: I still don't own X-Men 

**SA7** IceDragon5788@hotmail.com 


	3. Part III

**Whispered Word**

  


Hi. *shuffles sheepishly into view* I suppose you were expecting this part last month. Things did not go as planned. I had some issues that I don't want to spend forever talking about, and by the time I got them resolved I decided to make this post be on the 12th of this month. I promise to try harder in the future to keep up with the deadlines I have set. *hides*

***

Intro P3 - The Institute I ~_Scott_

***

It is a whispered word that seeks you out and grabs you by the hand, but you've spent so long denying it's existence that you refuse to except it. 

To deny it though, you must deny her, and you've never denied her anything. 

Her. Your savior and tormenter, salvation and damnation. She blends them so well that they begin to mean one and the same to you. 

It surrounds you when you are near her, always just out of reach, whispering figments in your ears, demanding to be spoken for. It nudges at your back, whimpering for your acknowledgment, teasing you with glimpses of simmering emerald catseyes, bending your will foreword and then backward again with a flash of burning crimson tresses, driving you mad, until you can no longer ignore it. But you must. You will be six feet under, tortured and maimed before you give in. Nothing has even held power over you like this before, especially a meaningless word, laughing and tempting with a crooked finger under a cape of green, cavorting with abandon in the eyes of a girl. 

You know its name. Ever since it found you again –since you came to this place– it has been tearing down the walls of your memory, savagely ripping open old wounds and boldly prodding long buried black and purple bruises and scars with needles, til they burst like fat violet-ebony balloons. You've always known its name in some distant corner of your mind. It used to be a gold enigma, now it is a enormous, glutenous, complicated nuisance, that you cannot except, even though it is at your back at all times, lurking in your shadow. 

You've been beating it off with a stick these days, but you are losing your will to fight back and it knows your resolve is crumbling. For every strike you take it lashes back twice as hard. Every time she catches your eyes it tries to sink its teeth in, and every time your gaze lingers too long it lays down in your path, attempting to break your stride. It is irresistible in its sweetness but haunting at the same time. You know it is only a matter of time before it gets you unaware and makes you its own. 

But even now, you refuse to name the whispered word. You've grown accustomed to it's sweet murmurs in your ear, but you refuse to become attached. Attachment only brings pain. Your newly opened memory will testify. Naming it would confirm acceptance, and you have not been defeated. Yet. 

Denial. It will always be a part of human nature. It is amazing what people can't see when they don't want to. 

You call the whispered word nothing, for fear you'll get too attached. 

***

**Part III**

***

Morning came creeping slowly onto the horizon, extending brilliant fingers of light across the sky and casting a soft pink glow that swelled over the sky, interlaced with crimson, violet and gold. Sunlight streamed across the damp grounds of the Xavier Estate, and rivulets of shimmering gold chased away the residue of the previous night's storm, washing it away and leaving behind only the distant memory of anything other than the peace of the morning. Flowers crept out of their beds again, gardeners reappeared in the early hours and the birds reappeared, ruffling the water off their backs and singing lustily to urge the new day forward. 

It was this liquid gold peace that descended like a veil over the estate, intoxicating anyone who witnessed it with its perfume, ensnaring the senses for a moment, and making everything stop, so that simply existing is enough to pacify one for the moment. It drifted through the windows of the estate, glittering off floating dust specs and making them shine like strands of gossamer. The hall and the adjoining rooms were still completely silent. 

In the first room the sunlight meandered aimlessly through the haphazard blinds that someone had obviously tried to draw closed and then became quite frustrated. It was a spacious room with first rate, polished wood furniture arranged tastefully. Shiny and expensive keepsakes were laid out on shelves and dressers, creating the image of a very rich inhabitant. The only thing that detracted from this image were all the clothes, books, papers and knickknacks strewn around sloppily and the state of its occupant. A blonde haired boy with a pair of wings dozed noisily in his grand king-sized bed, his head halfway buried under one of his pillows so that only tufts of blonde were visible. His thick spread was in a lump at the foot of his bed and his cotton sheets were in a disordered heap around the bed, with one leg underneath them and one leg sticking out at an odd angle. His arms were thrown out to both sides, as if he had just been through a particularly fitful dream, but now he rested peacefully, for the most part. 

The second room the sunlight reached had all the blinds and curtains open, allowing the light full access to its inner reassesses. It was a fairly blank room, with no personal effects anywhere, save a suitcase at the foot of the bed, since it's occupant had just moved in. A generic dresser sat in one corner and a set of empty shelves in another. All in all the almost empty room appeared even more vast than it really was, creating a large area of floor for the sunlight to dance across, creating a pool of golden light to fill the expanse. The girl in the bed, slept peacefully, with her sheets drawn up around her and her white hair fanned out on the pillow in unkept waves of snow. She had slept deeply the whole night, melting into the bed as if she had never slept on anything so soft in her entire life. Well-toned ebony arms were folded neatly around the sheets, with the sunlight playing across the smooth skin. 

The third room was an odd mixture of opened and unopened drapes that hadn't been touched or bothered with for months, but the sunlight did not mind and flitted in where it could, tickling across the carpet and across the bed. The room was neat enough, with only a few items here and there gracing the floor. It was also remarkably cold compared with the rest of the house, but not so cold as to cause discomfort. Various plans for pranks were laid out in explicit detail and filled according to a system that an ordinary person would never understand. A half opened drawer revealed a impressive stash of candy and twinkies along with a box of trading cards. The bed however, was empty. The sheets were pulled taught at one side spilling onto the floor, and rolled up tightly in them was a young boy, with his head resting in slumber mere inches from the night stand and his feet cocooned above him in the tangle. He still slept and perhaps it was for the better, because the new position restricted movement. 

The fourth room was the room of a boy who could not sleep. All the shades were drawn in this room, preventing the sunlight from witnessing his distress, so it could only glow behind the shades casting a yellow hue on them like old fetid paper. The dim light that filtered in through the cracks fell across the peaceful face of a boy who had slept this night, on top of his covers, with a black puppy resting at his head and a redheaded girl beside him. He still wore his ruby tinted shades, making it impossible to tell if he was awake or asleep, but the deep contented breathing that was coming from him told a different story. His brown hair was serving as a nest for the puppy, who's little chest was also rising and falling rhythmically. Every now and then she would twitch in her sleep, but even rough pawing could not wake the boy. His arm was thrown over the waist of the girl beside him, as if it was a completely natural instinct, who was also fast asleep on top of the covers with her hair fanned out around her. She did not belong there. There was a vacant room in her place somewhere down the hall. The sunlight knew this, and yet, never had there been such peace inside that room before. 

Morning came and went upon that scene, sparkling and fluttering in all of it's spring splendor, and still they slept on oblivious to the rest of the world. The dawn sunrise gave way to the midday sun, who's rays were more persistent. The dappled sunlight barged past the barriers at his window and warmed the side of Scott's face, casting slanted shadows across the bed and causing him to stir. Before he opened his eyes he made sure they were properly covered. When he felt the familiar weight of his glances he lazily opened his eyes and was startled by what he saw, until the events of last night flashed back to him, like a silent film before his eyes. 

It is a humbling thing to see your life mapped out before your eyes. Ambience was the flaxen strands of gossamer flecked with gold, lining up like tears of glass across her face and hair, clinging to the tips of delicate eyelashes and falling like snow on parted lips, lighter, brighter, beautiful. As he looked into the face of beauty beyond compare his thoughts became remarkably clear. A day, perhaps a year, maybe more, he could see into his future, into seconds that extended beyond moments, stretching into days at a time. Then the warped premonition spawned a notion that hit him full blown to the side of the face, leaving him in a dizzying haze that was so exciting and so terrifying that it was impossible to piece the emotions apart without tweezers. It was a rush to his brain, roaring in his ears, as beautiful as the sunlight and as sure as the rain, he knew beyond a doubt that he would know her for the rest of his life. And, he, the Keeper of Silences would always be bound to the Queen of Hearts without mercy, without escape, til it left them both in tears. Whether in the pain of memories or in person, he would never forget her. 

Then and there Scott Summers decided that no matter what, someday, he would marry Jean Grey. 

She sighed in her sleep and stretched out a hand, catlike, rotating her shoulder blades and extending each finger. Her eyelashes fluttered, dragonfly's wings, and opened like the first sunrise following his epiphany. Nothing so simple had ever looked so stunning in all his life. One day, perhaps a year, maybe more . . . 

She smiled like ruby satin, the way he'd always imagined her to the senses, sight, smell, sound, touch, taste, and said nothing. Silence is the best sort of language in these times. He was so entranced by her that he almost didn't see the tears. At first they were simply damp sparkles on her cheeks and pools in her huge green eyes, but she was still smiling. The world was still turning. Then a small sob eluded her careful control. It was enough to stop the world. 

"What is it?" He didn't trust his own voice, but somehow he forced the words out. 

Midday sun was filling the room slowly like sand in an hour-glass, suffocating, blinding. A girl, a boy and a puppy lay in the silence, soaking up the heat like sponges, and they still lay facing each other, with the world tilted ninety degrees, and Jean was crying beside him, her tears dampening the bed spread, drowning them both. She tried to blink away the tears to deny their existence, but he reached out a hand and caught them on his fingertips, keeping the proof. 

"Your dreams," she whispered wiping away the rest of the salt herself, shutting her eyes tight, so the rest of her tears pinched out the sides, "Your dreams," She repeated again, as if trying to shake the remaining sediments of an unpleasant memory. 

She had seen the light haired boy with the bright void eyes that had haunted Scott's dreams, staring expressionless. He was still filling his pockets with stones, tight lipped, frowning in concentration. He strolled barefoot on the sand with the water licking at his toes. The colors had been wrong, but she hadn't noticed. In the dream, that was the way they had always been to her, light, dark and red. The trees around the river were all onyx figures against the backdrop of a fiery red sky, and the river was a deep dark black, waiting to claim the light haired boy in its depths, reaching, lapping at his feet with a fervent desire and whispers of false promises, promises of release, promises of sweet oblivion. Promises. Promises. Wrapped in dark chocolate and tied with a bow. 

She sat on the opposite bank, as an observer frozen in time and space, forced to watch, but never interfere. She was younger in the dream, about as young as the boy, but somehow that made sense as well. She sat cross legged in a simple sun dress of indiscernible color, with childlike hands in her lap, knitting together thistles and dandelions into an infantile sort of necklace that only a child could appreciate for it's guileless beauty. She didn't dare step into that water. 

He stared straight at her as he walked into the river, with the starving water curling around him. The rest was terrible confusion. She was crying, screaming for him to stop, but she could not move and her voice went unheard. Then color erupted everywhere in a luminous flash of lucidity, jolting in its starkness, and the colorless boy became a different boy with brown hair and blue eyes. Dark chocolate brown, sky blue. Scott. Then something snapped in her head like an elastic shockwave and she was hurled rudely into consciousness, too dulled by the suddenness of it all to cry, too haunted to do much more than smile and fight the tears when she found him safe and sound beside her. It had been too real for comfort and the bitter aftertaste still remained. 

It had only just dawned on her that this dream was not her own. It bore another signature, and had been dreamed many times before by the boy beside her. And she had wept for him. 

He didn't understand. He opened his mouth to speak, but she halted him before he started with a finger on his lips, light like the tips of butterflies' feet, delicate, satin, halting him in his tracks. Her other hand flew up to his forehead, tracing the lines of his crinkled brow, and a fleeting image of the dream flickered through his mind across the link, but soon flickered out like a changing channel, thrusting him back into his previous thoughts. 

He almost wished he had told her she was beautiful yesterday. When was the last time she had heard it from someone who meant it like he did? But yesterday had flown, the eternal unreachable memory, and the present flowed onwards, turning seconds, into minutes past, never to be recaptured again, fading behind the veil of the past so quickly that they were gone before one could realize what they'd missed. 

And that she was, lying beside him crying his unshed tears like crystalline shards of the rarest jewels he had ever seen, spilling over her porcelain checks and the red wine cut embedded there. That was what she had always been, wine, gemstone and satin. Could one die of intrigue? 

_'And the Phoenix cried tears of diamond and pearl, healing all wounds.'_

He had read that in a book in the Professor's library a year or two ago, but now that single phrase came back to him, and he couldn't place it. Why did he always come back to The Phoenix when searching for a creature that described her? It made more sense to pick an earthly creature, a real creature, but everything she did absolutely oozed with the same unshakable notion. She dripped with fire, sensation and life. Could it be possible to heal wounds of the heart with something as simple as tears, chasing away the nightmares and distilling the shadows? He doubted nothing when he was with Jean. 

He lost the ability to cry when his mutation manifested, but his sorrows had fallen upon a merciful heart, born of flame, selfless and beautiful. She bled his tears from eternal emerald springs, the purest elixir he had ever known. The dream of the drowning boy was now a shared reverie, healed seamlessly by tears. His walls came tumbling down and the song of The Phoenix filled the room. Sound glistened in the form of a perfect silence, beading into beams of sunlight, rolling into tears and peeling into ethereal melody. She was his Phoenix, and he knew he would find want of nothing more the rest of his life. 

"I'm sorry," Was all he could think to say. 

"Why didn't you tell me?" Was the equally verbose reply. 

The question stopped him cold in his tracks. There really was no good reason why he hadn't told her. 'I was afraid' wasn't going to cut it here. She wanted the truth in all of its complexity. He gave it to her in a lump, and left it for her to unravel. 

"I didn't think my dreams were worth anyone's time." 

"But you know what they say it means if you keep having the same dream over and over again?" 

"Who said I keep having that dream over and over again?" Again he was shocked at the way she pounced on a conclusion that was way too accurate for comfort. 

"Scott, I'm not as stupid as I look." 

"I don't think you look stupid," He told her before he got to what he really wanted to ask, "Why did you have my dream anyway?" 

"I don't know," She puzzled over this for a moment, "I think it has something to do with that time that I went into your mind. I don't think the connection worked properly, or I did something wrong." 

"So it never turned off?" 

"I wouldn't say that exactly," Jean propped herself up on her elbows, dusted the tears from her eyes and mopped her hair out of her face with one sweep of her hand, "But something, I don't know what, is allowing me to access traces of your feelings, and I dreamt your dream. That definitely wasn't happening before . . . at least to my knowledge." 

Every word scattered through the air into a formless frenzy when the black puppy suddenly yipped and squirmed over Scott's head. She seemed to have been waiting for the best possible moment to disrupt conversation and had pulled off the feet admirably. Within moments she had righted herself and was busy sniffing along the mattress, coming between Scott and Jean, black tail whipping around excitedly. 

"Are we still not going to name her?" Jean asked, running a hand over the puppy's back. 

"What sort of name did you have in mind," Scott sighed. 

A slow grin spread across her face transforming the entire atmosphere, "I was thinking, something to do with music." 

They both sat and pondered for a moment, and then an idea came to Scott, "What was that song you were playing last night called?" 

"The Rondo Alla Turca?" 

"No, the other one. The one you stopped in the middle of when we found her," Scott had always liked that song best and it seemed fitting to him that the dog be named after that particular song, regardless of what the name of it turned out to be. 

The name that rolled of Jean's lips couldn't have been more perfect, "Fur Elise." 

As she said it the same thought struck her, and like lightning striking in the same place they both said it together, "Elise." 

The dog's ears perked up and she turned to look at him with a curiously contorted look on her continence, as if she was trying to make sense of the word. Elise she was. Once the name was decided upon it seemed impossible that she could ever be named anything. She looked like an Elise now that they thought about it. She had a lithe frame with a slim build, a dark black sheen, a perfect pointed muzzle, ears made of velvet and the deepest onyx eyes either of them had ever seen. Yes, Elise she had always been and was meant to be. 

"We are probably expected downstairs," Jean sighed glancing at the digital clock by Scott's bed, "It's 11:20" 

"Yes, it would probably be a good idea to avoid suspicion," He did not meet her eyes this time, but she knew what he meant. There was no need for them to be forming bad impressions, despite wether they were true or not. 

Jean rolled off his bed and found her feet. She was still wearing the clothes she had worn yesterday. Looking down at Scott's bed she saw again the brightly colored circles that took up most of the top sheet, so carefully painted on by Bobby's artistic yet misguided hand. Scott saw where she was looking and chuckled to himself. He hadn't even remembered the state his bed was in the entire night. 

Jean ensnared his gaze again with her glittering impossibly green eyes, "I'm going to go take a shower and get dressed. See you for lunch I guess," She let the last part come out as a chuckle. 

"Yeah, I should do the same." 

***

Lunch was a fairly uneventful affair. Jean came downstairs dressed in another simple shorts and T-Shirt combo, intent on making herself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to pacify the cravings of her stomach, and eat it on the veranda that overlooked the pool, until Scott located her. Elise followed her down and instantly perked up when she noticed that there was another human already occupying the kitchen. 

Ororo was perched on one of the marble topped counters with a mixing bowl in her lap, her naturally platinum white locks draping over her shoulders, hiding her face from view as she stirred the contents of the bowl with a wooden spoon. She stirred and looked up quickly when she heard Jean enter, and again Jean was stunned by the way her presence immediately drew all eyes in the room. Her warm butterscotch features glowed in the light of the sun shining through the kitchen windows, and Jean could swear she had never seen eyes so blue in all her life. Except for once, in a dream. She imagined that Scott's eyes would look very similar to Ororo's. 

"Hi," Jean smiled genuinely, the puppy skidding past her feet eager to see Ororo, with claws scrapping on the tile floor as she tried to regain her balance. 

Ororo responded in kind with a smile of her own, and this time Jean felt that she was actually being acknowledged by the other girl, "Hello, Jean isn't it? I'm sorry, I was distracted last night when the professor introduced us." 

She set the bowl down on the counter and dropped to the floor to greet an ecstatic Elise, who took all the attention lavished on her with great enthusiasm. Jean could already see that Ororo would easily become the dog's favorite. The black lab hopped around from foot to foot, trying to bath Ororo with her salmon pink tongue, as the other girl's nimble fingers stroked her behind the ears and down her back. 

"Yes," Jean nodded, "It's no big deal. We can have an introduction now." 

Her voice sounded so plain next to Ororo's rich alto. She spoke so eloquently and with such serenity that Jean found it hard to image what she would be like if she got angry. Though, no doubt she could. Her voice was yet another mystery to the compound secret that was Ororo. 

Ororo nodded, "Alright, but before we do there is one pressing question I have that was never answered last night," Jean tilted her head questioningly waiting for her to go on, and that she did with a small smile, "What exactly is your dog's name?" 

"Elise," Jean replied still testing the name on her lips, "If you want the truth, we just got her last night." 

"Oh?" Ororo looked up in interest. 

"There isn't much to tell," Jean sighed and went to the pantry as she spoke, retrieving bread and peanut butter and placing them on the counter without the aid of her powers, she wanted to surprise this girl, "We, me and Scott that is, found her last night during the storm. I got this cut on my cheek from the rescue in fact. Scott wasn't fond of the idea that we keep her, but I insisted that we just clean her up a bit. We had just finished giving her a bath in Scott's bathtub when the Professor returned with you. I suppose you are responsible for us being able to keep her. When the Professor saw how delighted you became when you saw her, there was no way he could refuse. He still has yet to speak to us on the manner of letting strange animals into his house while he is out though." 

Ororo listened to the story with a slightly bemused expression playing on her features. She rose from the floor with a grace that was present in all of her movements and returned to her batter. Elise, seeing that nobody would be paying attention to her, began to explore the kitchen. 

"He didn't seem too mad when I spoke to him at breakfast. He let me have the kitchen to make cookies," She indicated to the bowl, "I also much apologize for the storm last night. I'm afraid that was my doing. It was traveling ahead of me. I do believe the weather will be quite nice today though." 

"What!?" Jean nearly dropped the jelly she was placing on the counter. 

"I see the Professor never informed you of my mutation," Ororo raised a platinum eyebrow in amusement. 

"No," Jean's eyes widened in interest. 

"I am able to guide weather patterns and often do it subconsciously depending on my emotions," Jean's eyes were growing wide with wonder as she spoke, "Where I came from they used to call me The Weather Witch, but that is a story for another time. What about you? This is a school for mutants is it not? What have you got up your sleeve?" 

"Nothing near as impressive as what you can do," Jean said stepping away from her creation and telekineticly lifting the two slices of bread and slapping them into place, before catching it in her hand and saying with the utmost seriousness, though unable to mask the playful smile that warmed her features, "I seem to be followed by ghosts." 

Ororo's azure eyes had turned to saucers, and she continued to stare as Jean walked towards the table while the pantry and refrigerator doors opened by themselves and everything returned to their normal places, even the used silverware that floated over to the sink, "Ghosts eh?" Ororo smirked, catching on the humor, "They seemed to be at your beck and call." 

"That's the crazy thing about it!" Jean cried, throwing her hands out dramatically and falling down at the table, "So my parents sent me here to have them exorcized." 

"I see," Ororo's wry smile was hard to miss, "Well, now I know that you're a telekinetic, anything else you'd like to tell me?" 

"Yes," Jean admitted, "I'm also telepathic. This is the part were most people run away. They think the telekinesis is cool, but when it comes to reading minds, nobody wants me in the same room as them. I'll understand if . . ." 

"Hey, most people don't take to kindly to the fact that I can bring hurricanes about when I'm angry," Ororo said seriously, walking over to Jean and sitting across from her, the cookie dough momentarily forgotten, "We've all got our own quirks." 

Elise trotted dutifully over to Ororo again and began jumping and yipping placing her front paws on the chair and nudging her legs with her nose. Ororo affectionately stroked the eager puppy's head and the wag of her tail sped up. 

"If that's what you like to call it," Jean sighed and gazed out the kitchen windows longingly, "It does look like today will be beautiful. Perfect for horseback riding," That would make up for her deterred trip to the veranda ten fold. 

"Horseback riding?" Ororo's voice was full of amazement, "I had no idea there were horses here." 

"Yes," Jean nodded, "We can all go after getting a bite to eat." 

"That would be absolutely wonderful, but I do hope that Bobby kid doesn't cause as much trouble as I I think he would." 

"Oh, so you met him," Jean grinned, "Yes, Bobby is sometimes prone to childish flights of immaturity." 

"I met everyone at breakfast except for you and that tall dark and handsome who keeps to your side," Ororo raised an eyebrow and crossed her fingers under her chin, watching Jean's amusing reaction with interest. 

Jean blushed in spite of herself and spoke to the table, "Scott is just my best friend. I think he'll be down in a little bit." 

Ororo chose to avoid further comment on the issue, but her sharp mind was already putting the pieces together for her. She hadn't even witnessed the two teens exchange a single word, and yet there was an almost palpable connection that wrapped around them, sealing them from the rest of the world. Words were not needed in bonds like that. Her instincts told her that they were inseparable to a degree that extended beyond the simple friendship that Jean claimed to, and her instincts weren't usually wrong. She would not pass judgement however, until she had seen more. 

"Whatever you say," Ororo's tone was too sugar-coated for Jean's liking, but she let it slide. This girl wasn't the only one in the mansion with suspicions, "I'd like to finish those cookies, and then I am amenable to whatever the rest of you decide upon." 

Jean looked like she was about to say something, but she suddenly perked up and turned towards the doorway. Moments later Scott Summers stepped into the kitchen. Elise trotted over to him, tail thumping wildly. 

"Ah ha!" He grinned and pointed at the sandwich in Jean's hand, "The peanut butter and jelly monster strikes again! You're the one who's taking all the bread! I knew it!" 

Jean guilty eyed the sandwich and then looked at Scott, "If you want one, there's still bread left." 

"Thank you," Scott sighed and turned to look at Ororo, "And how are you this morning?" 

Ororo indulged him with a response, though she could tell all his attention was on the girl across from him and their drama of sorts with the sandwich. She found her lips quirk up in spite of feeling on the outside, and watched the scene unfold. 

"Yeah, just the end pieces," Scott scowled putting on an expression of disgust. 

Jean eyed him steadily an stood up, placing her hands on her hips, "Well, what are you gonna do about it Summers?" 

Scott squared his shoulders and walked right up to her with the glare still plastered on his face until they were forehead to forehead glowering at each other. It looked to Ororo as if he wanted to kiss her, in fact it looked _exactly_ like he was _going_ to kiss her. Then, in a split second he snatched the sandwich from Jean's hand and made a run for it. 

"SCOTT!" Jean shrieked before taking off after him still screaming threats, "THAT WAS _MY_ SANDWICH!!!! If you even _think_ about eating it I'm gonna _kill_ you!" 

Ororo looked at the black lab who appeared to be just as stunned, and silently thanked the goddess for emptying the kitchen so she could continue baking in peace. The leader and the lady had it bad for each other. 

***

That evening Jean and Scott walked Elise down to the old oak by the water with a worn red leash she had scrounged up in the attic. They offered the others a chance to come with but all of them had suddenly invented plans of their own and hastily shuffled off with overly congenial looks on their faces, not that either of them truly minded much, but their continued avoidance of these outings, like they knew something that neither of them were aware of, was slightly annoying. 

Elise made the journey last longer then usual because of her unfailing tendency to chase after anything that moved. Little crickets hopping along the stony path, small squirrels and chipmunks moving around in the bushes and even birds flying or perched weren't safe from Elise's bark. 

She tangled her leash around Jean's legs constantly and once she snagged Scott's, binding them together and causing them to trip and fall into a mass of tangled limbs and leash. Blushing and laughing at the same time they helped to untangle each other without hurting Elise, who was still attached to the other end, barking and bouncing on her imaginary springs, clearly proud of herself for the stunt she pulled. It wasn't until Jean was practically in Scott's lap, while trying to pull the leash off their feet, that the laughter silenced and only the blushing remained. Suddenly, the whole trip was more intimate than intended. 

He wanted to say something. Unknown words were creeping up his throat and begging to be spoken, but she rendered him speechless and tongue tied, as usual. Wether or not, his awkwardness showed, Jean did not indicate that she noticed. She simply cleared her throat and slipped the leash off of them without saying a word. There would be a time when they would have to address this attraction, but now was not it. 

They slipped among the greenery and along down the path with the triumphant puppy hopping along ahead of them. The remainder of the evening was spent under the old oak by the water absorbed bliss and completely indifferent to the rest of the world. In the fading evening light they sat on the bank of the lake barefoot, watching Elise splash in the shallows, chasing after all the startled fish Jean normally feed who were looking for a meal. She could not catch a single one, but that would never deter her from trying. 

Out of nowhere a swish of water smacked into Scott's face, dousing his entire head and shirt. He turned and glared at his giggling friend who exploded into full blown laughter when she saw his expression. 

"Jean," He growled. 

"What?" She asked innocently through her giggles, "I hope you don't think that _I_ did that, because I would never- 

Without warning Scott splashed her back. Her laughter was silenced, and she yelped when the cold water hit her. It was Scott's turn to laugh. 

"I hope you don't think that _I_ did that." 

"Whoops, my hand slipped!" She returned by sending another curtain of water at him. 

She was still snickering when Scott turned and gave her an absolutely demonic look. She shrieked and tried to get away, but he was faster. In one sweep her scooped her up and carried her out into the shallows. Through giggles and half-hearted struggling she tried to protest but he carried her out deeper. 

"Scott!" She screeched, "If you don't put me down . . ." 

"As you wish," He complied and deposited her unceremoniously into the water. 

When she resurfaced she was quick to pounce on him and dunk him below the silvery spray. When they both resurfaced grinning and gasping for breath they each looked back towards the shore. In the ebbing light they could still make out the form of Elise against the green backdrop, staring at them with a most confused expression. Jean smoothed back her wet hair and flashed Scott and mischievous look. 

"Tag. Your it." She said simply, letting her fingers graze his shoulder before swimming away. 

Scott sighed happily and launched his pursuit. With a little effort he was able to catch up to her, and she took up splashing to dissuade his chase. When he succeeded in seizing her waist he picked her up and dunked her, before he cut back through the water to get away. 

The game lasted until the sun was merely a flaming orange dot on the horizon, casting silken pink rays over the darkening sky. Elise was pacing the shoreline barking at them, seeming to say that it was time to return to the mansion. 

The game of tag continued, through soaking clothes and dimming light, all the way home. 

***

**Quick Notes**: Again, I'm sorry for the delay. I _promise_ that the fourth and final part will be up no later than 12/12. And with that, I'd like to get all my thanking and disclaiming and babbling done here so that nothing takes away from the final part, which I will post completely devoid of note. 

**Thank you to anyone who has every reviewed and thank you again for looking over the errors. If you come back even though I kept you waiting forever, thank you for being patient.**

**SA7**


	4. Part IV

  


**Whispered Word**

***

Intro PIV - The Institute II _~Jean_

  


It is a whispered word born of a new meaning in the face of a boy. This notion that you have tried to find and capture for the longest time, drinks on the wine of your heartstrings and threatens to swallow you whole. You know yourself and it knows you, now that you are out of that place. 

Perhaps you thought to glean some knowledge on this misinformed adventure into your own soul, but your thoughts are molten, burning you alive, and your heart is a masterpiece written in foreign language. You'd sit and wait for an interpreter, but you haven't got the time. A conflagration has started and you've got to find something to put out the flames before they consume you. They were always afraid of your powers breaking out of the locks and bolts that hold your sanity so delicately into place. Did they ever realize that you were afraid of yourself as well? 

You've never feared death. You've stared straight into it's bottomless eyes and felt only one thing. Anger. Death has robbed you of so many things you loved, and left you to live in the misery of their memories. It will not take you because you are not afraid, and it can't be satisfied if you don't tremble in fear at it's coming, but oh how it threatens to take away all of your life's breath, just because it can. 

So you've been scrambling, living as much life as you can because you never know when it will all be rudely taken back. You're living on borrowed time. Every Phoenix dies in the end. Always suicide. Are they too, driven by a Fate that is out of their control? 

But ever since you met that boy, you fear death, and now it has a reason to take you. You want to live, just to be near him. He is enough to make you long for life with every spark of your being, and death is the only thing that could ever take you away from him. You'd kill and die for him, and if needed, you'd rise from the dead and kill again, just to protect him. 

You cling to the whispered word, for now it means life. 

***

**Part IV**

***

She had dreamt of the drowning boy again, with pale pepper grey eyes and light salty hair. He had looked at her and held her gaze steadily for the longest of short moments she had ever known, holding her in the infinity of his depthless eyes for uncountable time, stared like she was a spellbinding fire sitting by the river bank, slowly burning away under unblinking eyes. This time she got to her feet and looked straight back at him, with a perfectly dreadful sense of premonition that always visits in the deepest of dreams, and the flames leapt in his reflective eyes. 

For an instance she forgot herself in the reality of the dream, the depth of her youth, the tickle of grass blades beneath her feet, the bubble and whine of the tireless black river, and the very real boy standing on the opposite bank with tight lips and sad eyes. When he began to wade into the famished water, the blood red sky came crashing down on her, and she became aware of another repeat dream closing up around her. This wasn't supposed to happen. She wasn't supposed to have this dream again. The images barreled onward trapping her in the nightmare that she thought she was rid of. 

Just before the boy sank below the waves, mobility struck her, blinding like the lightning, and she was diving into the inky black water, without a breath, without a thought, faster than a heartbeat. The water had looked so intimidating before, but now all traces of fear had vanished. She swam out to him as swiftly as her body would allow, cutting a straight course through the waves pounding into her in angry protest. She was just in time to catch two fingers before they slipped below the surface, lacing two of her own through them stopping him from sinking any further. 

To her surprise his fingers tightened around hers, and they were sealed together by four fingers. Four fingers that would ether save them or drag them both to the bottom. Her other hand found the rest of his arm and she tried with all her might to pull him up. It was impossible. She was being dragged into the depths of the river now too. The water was claiming her, just as it did the boy, filling all her senses, pulling her beneath the surface. She could still escape, but she would rather die than let go of the boy. The river set itself up to arrange just that. 

Everything was black. There was a deafening roar in her ears. Her head spun. No air. Slowly and silently death surrounded her until the roar faded and everything around her became peaceful and set. Like fallen soldiers her senses shut down one by one. Taste. Smell. Sight. Hearing. The last thing she was aware of was the touch of the boy's fingers, intertwined with her own. Crack! 

At the sound two students in the Xavier mansion sat bolt upright in their beds at the exact same moment. Though they lay in separate rooms, they both had been jolted awake from the same dream. Each tried to control their ragged breathing, swallowing and gulping mouthfuls of air as if every breath was their last, staring around with skittish eyes and rattled nerves, trying to find the source of the noise that had brought them out of the prison the dream had been. 

Rain was pouring down in torrents all around the estate. Lighting flashed and thunder screamed again. Another summer storm had come to visit during the night. The realization that it had only been the thunder that woke them did not entirely sooth. The rain was indicative of a river, a river neither of them ever wanted to visit again. 

Jean remained sitting, her ever busy mind always thinking, processing, sorting out her own thoughts from the thoughts of what might be a thousand others. She knotted her hands together around her knees with four fingers, two fingers clasped together on each hand. She wasn't supposed to be having that dream again. It wasn't hers, and yet, somehow it had become hers. It made more sense than she would ever admit to herself. She had become accustomed to denial of things deep inside her mind. It was so much easier to float on the surface of all these deeper thoughts and exist in the sensation of the present moment. 

Scott. He forced her further into everything than she ever wanted, grounded her with reality. Nobody else had ever done that to her, and she didn't know how to take it. He symbolized a past so troubled and so isolated, that she could not overlook the memory of her own past. The saying terrible tragedy loves company held true here. He identified with her on that level, even though his prison had been an orphanage, and hers an asylum. He trusted her completely, which was more than anyone else who knew she was a telepath had ever done. They all pretended to be at ease, when really they were just plain scared she would read their thoughts and know everything that lay at the cores of their beings every dirty secret, every lie, everything. They saw her as a walking violation to their right to keep all these things chained to the inner recesses of their souls never to see the light of day. She had always told them otherwise, but they would never believe her. They were always afraid. Scott, a boy who had always been naturally distrusting, had never once been scared of her in this way. 

He smiled at her more than most people did, laughed for her more than he would for anyone else and would make her laugh in return. He talked to her about things that mattered to him, listened to her when she did the same, and when they weren't speaking he did things to her without even uttering a single syllable. He was the only person she had ever known who could make her laugh herself to tears and then cry herself to pieces in the same moment, though she had to admit she liked it better when it happened backwards. It was a most flawless universe they had perfected around their friendship. So perfect that she woke up in the mornings with only one desire, to sit with Scott under that oak tree and laugh together until her belly ached with the unbearable sweetness of existence, and she could actually savor the tang and honey taste of it in her mouth. 

More and more, she was beginning to notice what an attractive boy Scott was. Even with those glasses he had a full-lipped, pearly white smirk, that graced his face in the rare times that he was alone with her. Even as terrible as the dream had been, she had taken one thing back with her that she would never forget. The sight of Scott's eyes. The most amazing blue eyes in all the universe had to be kept hidden because they were lethal. Irony bursted from every seam of that thought. Life was cruel like that, especially to Scott. Now that she had seen his eyes, the memory alone would not satisfy. 

She let these thoughts rule her mind as the minutes dripped slowly past. The clock on her beside table read 5:02. The storm that had startled her awake was already fading away, and the blue haze of pre-morning mist hung around the air outside her window. Distantly she heard the sound of a song bird starting its own rhythmic chant and knew that there would be more joining him soon. The herald of the morning sang on with a shrill voice and a determined heir, as if the burden of bringing Spring back to the gardens forsaken by the night was all his alone. Didn't everyone feel like that at one point or another? 

She rose. She did not know what propelled her, the song of the bird, now being joined by another, or merely the chanting in the shadows of her own mind. The dream had given her a good jolt and she was still reeling from it, too awake to go back to the haven of sleep, and something told her she would not be alone in her suffering. She didn't know how she had come to develop this sixth sense when it came to Scott, but she didn't at all care too much either. Scott could sense her just as much, and it was comforting sometimes. The telepathic blunder that had happened two mornings ago had only strengthened what was already there. 

She walked downstairs barefoot, the soft carpet giving way to let her tired feet sink into the luxurious burgundy. She felt no real compulsion to change out of her baggy T-shirt and shorts, and walked through the corridors with her hand trailing along the wall. When she was a younger girl, she never would have dreamed that her teenage years would be spent like this, treading the hallways of the Xavier Estate barefoot, in the early hours of morning. She never would have dreamed she was telepathic either, and now it came as second nature to her. She never would have dreamed a lot of things. If only everyone could live according to childhood dreams. Surprisingly, she did not regret any of the turns her life had taken. This course had led her to Scott, and now, she could not image how she could go back to her old life, knowing he existed. 

The banister slid cool under her fingers and the floor in the hall downstairs was ice to her feet, so she increased her pace, intent on reaching the boy on which her thoughts were all centered on. She trotted to the kitchen, where she knew he would be. And there he was, lazy smirk still lavishly adorning his features as if time had stopped since the last she saw him, and was only starting up again now. Right where they left off. He was sitting on one of the stools around the bar in the middle of the kitchen, spotting her immediately as she entered the kitchen as if he had known, just as she had, the instant she would walk through the door. He was nursing a steaming cup of instant coffee like it was a bottle of whiskey, looking tired and restless at the same time, like someone who was afraid to go to sleep after having a nightmare. The same nightmare. 

"Hey Red," He offered his simple customary greeting, but tonight it meant more than that. He didn't look in the least bit surprised to see her, nor did he try to cover up that he had known. He was acknowledging what they both already knew, that the connection between them was very real, and getting stronger by the day. 

"Hey yourself Summers," She padded into the kitchen and plopped down on a stool beside him. 

"So now you know what it feels like to drown," Scott sighed, his smile lessening, "Why did you jump in after me? . . . er him." 

"I think you know why," Jean fixed him with a look and again was stricken with the fact that beyond the visor she was staring into the bluest eyes on the planet, "I'd never let you drown Scott. I'll either save you or die trying." 

Those words struck a nerve somewhere, and Scott became aware of that all too familiar feeling in the pit of his stomach, like someone had released a cage of butterflies in his gut. She was being sincere. She would. He could never let her die trying to save him. Now he had to get out of that river, if only just to pull her ashore and make sure she was safe. He couldn't yet name this feeling she brought forth in him, couldn't quite understand the jumbled mummers of this whispered word, but he knew it was something profound. Something in him was scared to look, for fear of what he might understand. It was an absolutely terrifying thing to care about someone so much. 

"Scott," Jean was drumming her fingers on the table top, hesitant to disrupt his thoughts, "You know it's not raining anymore." 

"That it is not," The smile returned to his face and he stood up, "Care to go for a walk Ms Grey." 

"That depends," Jean's answering smile was teasing, "Where are we going?" 

"Far away from the house where no one can hear you scream," Scott faked a sinister voice and chuckled wickedly. 

"Sounds delightful. Lead the way." 

On the outside the world had not woken up yet, and the new son still rested in its cradle with only the faintest tints of frayed yellow light in the east to show that it was coming. A soft mist was still falling in drops that weighed less than tears, left behind in the wake of the larger storm that had passed over quickly and was gone without enough time to fully pummel the grounds, as the storm the night before had. The gardens were all drowning in shadows with invisible birds still rasing a chorus to the heavens. In the almost blackness it was easy for two figures to slip out of the house unseen, still barefoot and clad in pajamas they made their way along familiar paths, led by every instinct in them to the old oak that waited by the water. 

The sopping wet grass squelched between her toes but Jean didn't mind. The night had not completely drawn back her sable cloak. The enchantress was still working her wonders on the world. The heavens where still a dim and bottomless pouring forth mist from the abyss, blanketing the earth so quietly it could not be heard, so light that it seemed to float to earth. Beyond the clouds she knew that the moon and stars would still be visible, but not now. The blackness was tangible. The enigmatic and impossible to pinpoint sounds of night creatures still buzzed and echoed, bouncing off the blackness like rattling bones, eerie, but so captivating that shivers of awe run wild across one's skin. 

They passed through this realm, without speaking, as if that might break the haze. The orchard was a regiment of silent black sentinels, with their innocent pink dusted blossoms drawn up tight. Standing in the white and silver mist the clan of them transformed the grounds into a fantasy land. The mist was damp enough to cover everything, including them with a light sheen of moisture, making their hair stick to their necks and leaving their clothes feeling floppy, like they hadn't finished drying quite yet. Twice Jean heard the thrumming of an insect's wings as one darted past her ear, and sometimes a toad or a vole would rustle in the grass when they came nearer and disappear from sight. 

"You know if this mist rises soon enough, there may be a sunrise," Jean said softly to her companion, who she could just barely make out in the shadows. 

"I wonder how it would look from the top of the oak," Was his reply. Then he sought out and captured her hand with his own and dragged her closer to him until he could whisper to her. He carefully pushed her hair aside, his lips brushing the shell of her ear as he spoke, "I can hardly see you, Marvel Girl. You're not allowed to leave me until you show me that sunrise." 

Thrills raced though her, not at his words, but because of what he had done. They had never discussed what had almost happened in his bathroom the other night, and now she wondered just what sort of game they were playing, dancing around each other, and pretending that this mutual attraction didn't exist. In the isolated fairy world of the orchard, she felt a new courage surge through her veins. She stopped and turned to face him. He looked at her curiously, the lines of his face disguised in shadow, and the pixie dust mist beading into droplets on his ruby glasses. How hard for him it must be to see her with the darkness magnified in his glasses and drops clinging to them. Then she realized why he had grabbed her hand. He couldn't see at all. 

"Scott, if you don't want to do this . . ."She started, "I mean . . . I don't want you to get hurt." 

"You forget that I have lived blind before. You learn different ways to survive," His lips quirked up at her concern, "And besides, I trust you won't lead me into any of these trees. I'd trust you with my life." 

Jean frowned at him. It touched her to know that he would trust her with his life, but this was a serious matter. What if he got hurt? How could he be so unconcerned with the situation? 

"Well I'd certainly try not to, but Scott, I've never led anyone before in my- . . . wait," Her curious frown deepened, "How did you know we were in the orchard?" 

"Like I said, you learn different ways to survive. I can always smell the orchard, sweet and pollen covered in the Spring turning into spicy and tangy when the apples come in the fall," He could imagine the huge 'O' that her cherry satin mouth would form when she heard those words. He wanted to tell her the rest. He wanted to tell her that she always smelled like the orchard, even in the winter when the trees were all naked skeletons. She was his constant Spring, but he couldn't tell her that. Not yet. 

"Wow," She said simply, staring into his face with awe. 

She wanted to finish what they had started with intent in his bathroom. Just being alone with him in the orchard stirred up so many complex emotions. Now was not the time though. Right now she just wanted his company as a friend, and perhaps in a day, a week, a year or maybe more, they would be ready to examine all the boundaries they had crossed. Someday she would be ready to accept the depth of her feelings and finally admit that the whispered word existed. Scott seemed to sense every one of these thoughts, and ended the moment by bringing the hand he held up his mouth and placing a chaste kiss on the back of it. 

And she led him through their fairyland, in a universe all their own, shielded by the walls of her telekinesis. The mist was orbiting them now but never touching them, carrying with it the scent and taste of apple blossoms and the sounds of the night on the outside. Everything turned perfect like this when it was just the two of them. Soon they left the orchard behind and traveled along familiar paths until they came to the lake and the oak beside it. Jean let out her breath in a gasp. 

A sunrise was indeed starting right over the water. It was only a small sliver of modeled orange and yellow with hues of pink, peeking above the tops of the trees, distorted and cloudy in the mist. It cast a luminous reflection across the white wine water, filled with tiny mist ripples across its silken surface. Too beautiful for words. 

"Oh Scott," She breathed when she finally found her voice, pulling him closer to the edge of the lake where she stood, as if that would help him see. 

"It's hideous isn't it," Scott smiled ruefully and stared off in the direction of the sunrise he could not see. 

"No," She turned him toward her and reached to touch his temples, "This is what I see." 

She again felt the warmth of his mind merging with hers and indulged herself in the sensation for a few moments, wrapping his essence around her like a blanket. What would she ever do if they lost this? She decided to ponder this at a later date and instead turned her eyes towards the sunrise, hearing Scott's gasp when he saw the sight she had given him. Her TK shield dissipated when she concentrated on the link, causing the mist to come down on them again, but it didn't matter. Nothing else mattered. 

They stood like that for a time that seemed like a second and a lifetime all at once, engulfed in the rising sun to the east, making a slow ascent into the sky and lighting up the world around them by slow degrees casting dancing orange flames on the water's surface. The sky was changing from deep black to a navy blue and grey. 

Finally, she let her hands fall, and he caught them in his own, bringing them down to their sides. He could see a little bit now in the increasing light, but not enough to be able to make her out completely. He couldn't make out the expression on her face, but this was enough. She had shown him an earth-shatteringly beautiful display of color, through her own eyes, and again he truly appreciated the powers that had been bestowed upon her. They were quiet a pair, the Queen of Hearts in all her radiance on the throne of the sunrise and the Keeper of Silences, never able to express his emotions in words. 

"I want to see it from the oak," Her hands slipped out of his, and the two of them raced toward the oak only a few feet away. 

For all the dimness in his sight, Scott was still an agile climber. He nimbly moved upwards, scaling the slippery wet branches, with bare feet and damp pajamas. Jean was close behind, trying eagerly to get to the highest branch she could. When he reached his destination, he turned around to watch her. 

The next series of events happened in staggering slow motion. She was just about to swing herself onto the last branch when she lost her balance and stumbled. The tree shuddered violently. Scott's breath stopped in his throat. With a surprising act of strength aided by her telekinesis she was able to maintain a meager hold on the tree, so she did not fall, but she had not safely recovered yet. With blind and frantic kicks she finally got her feet back on the branch below that, and she was clawing at the top branch, trying to keep her grip. 

Wet branches aren't good for climbing however, and Scott watched in horror as her slender pianist's fingers lost their grip on the soaked branch. He was already moving to help her when her footing slipped. 

And she was falling. 

She spilled towards earth with wings spread out and eyes wide, like a Phoenix falling from her kingdom in the heavens, so stunning, and so terrible at the same time. With silent certainty the end loomed nearer, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. He watched, paralyzed as her light form collided gracelessly with the earth. Arch of back. Crack of bone. Shriek of pain. 

His fallen Phoenix lay shattered, her fragile form spread prone across the ground. The sky wept, the sympathetic drops of mist beading on her ivory skin looking paler than he'd ever seen her and the scarlet tresses spread around her head, with curling wisps coiling across her porcelain face. One of her legs was bent backwards at an odd angle, and she wasn't moving. Fear was the lightning bolt of emotion that ran through him breaking his skin into a cold sweat instantly. 'Please let her be alright' was the mantra he repeated in his mind while he leapt down to the ground with as much speed as he could manage with all of his limbs crumbling and seemingly ready to give way under him at any moment. 'Please let her be alight'. 

Amazingly he made it to the ground without collapsing, and was at her side in an instant, hands shaking with terror, "Jean!? Speak to me! Jean!!!" 

She blinked and stared up at him with pain clouded eyes, tears prickling in their endless green depths, "Scott," The distance in her voice frightened him, "My head . . . I can't think." 

His own head was beginning to pound in answer. Someone was taking a jackhammer to the inside of his brain and just _pounding_. He bit back a growl of pain and was startled again when a white-hot knife of excruciating pain stabbed through his left shin. He couldn't contain the cry of pain that barged from his mouth without restraint and was surprised to hear that he wasn't the only one. Jean's scream came in synchrony with his own. He clutched his leg in reaction and found that it was perfectly fine, but one glance at Jean and he realized the source of both of their pain. Why hadn't he noticed it before? The twisted leg was grotesquely out of position, and a fracture was clearly visible under her skin. Her left shin had broken. 

He fought to stand, against the stinging needles of pain in his leg, and repeated over and over again in his mind that the pain wasn't real. It wasn't real. It wasn't real. He had to overcome it for Jean's sake. It wasn't real, but oh god it hurt. On top of that his head was still pounding, and he saw spots of oily flourescent color wafting in and out in front of his vision. He took one look at Jean, sprawled on the ground in unspeakable agony, the screams silenced in her throat before they reach her parted satin lips and her gemstone eyes still clouded as affliction seized her thoughts and strangled them. His pain was forgotten. 

"I'll go get help," He rasped fighting an inner battle with his mind, so locked with hers that her pain became his own. 

"No," She begged, and the telekinetic force of her plea knocked him to his knees, "Don't leave me Scott. Don't leave me," This she repeated over and over again, clutching his shirt with a mad desperation until her cries became only whispers. 

He couldn't. Not when she was begging him with all the strength she had left in her to stay by her side. Even if he could, he wouldn't. In this moment he finally grasped the concept his heart had known all along. She meant everything to him. He carefully lifted her head into his lap, and tried to think wonderful things. If they were so linked that he could feel her pain, just maybe he could turn that around. He tried to think of the sunset last night, of the sunrise this morning, but these thoughts were interspersed with flecks of color and shocks of pain. She latched onto these thoughts though, breathing raggedly and urging him to stick to them. If he could just sooth her long enough for help to come . . . He had to get help. 

"Somebody help!" 

The night was waning as fast as his strength, but the mist, now turning into rain again was relentless. The spots were getting bigger and bigger. It was hard to keep a grip on reality. The telepath in his lap was about to pass out. His screamed another petition to the heavens at the top of his lungs. 

"SOMEBODY HELP!!!" 

The effort of his scream took the breath from him and his head swam, but he couldn't stop. 

"SOMEBODY HELP!!!" 

She was fading fast. He shouted over and over again until his voice was hoarse from wear, and ran gentle fingertips up and down her lifeless arms, trying to return some feeling to her. Think of the sunrise. Don't stop. Must get help. Pinprick pierce. _Pounding_. 

Then suddenly the pain faded and disappeared into a thoughtless black abyss. She was out. He huddled her closer to him and shouted the rest of his voice away. 'Where nobody can hear you scream' Suddenly those words invoked a true terror in his heart. What if nobody could hear him? Panic gave way to hysteria and before he knew it he was sobbing. 

"Oh God Jean. Oh God no." 

He had never even given much thought to God in the past. As far as he was concerned, God had never given him much thought. But now more than ever, he prayed that there was something up there who would help him. If not for his sake, then for Jean's. 

He leaned over her to shield her motionless body from the freezing rain, pressing tender kisses to her forehead and damp crimson hair. His soaked clothes clung to him and the frosty rain nipped at his skin, causing shivers to rake through him. Still he clung to Jean, his only keystone. The silence in her mind was stifling his senses and pulling him under. 

Then there came an angel sloshing through the rain under the shroud of rising mist and blackness. Scott had to squint at first to make the figure out, but as the figure trudged nearer toward them he could make out battered grime-caked boots squishing through grass and mud as fast as the feet contained in them could go. A large worn and ratty garbage bag of a coat was draped over the entirety of the figure's body, with a hood flung far over face, and sleeves disguising arms. 

Scott called out weakly, his voice choked and his consciousness evanescing, and then slumped against his broken Phoenix whispering silent prayers in his mind that would not form on his lips. The stranger finally reached them at his lumbering run and pulled back his hood. Grey hair frothed forth and dampened quickly in the rain, and bright brown pools of eyes widened with concern under gnarled eyebrows. The waxen faced gardener who tended the apple trees looked down on them in alarm, fear racing through him at the sight of the two children huddled on the ground. 

Scott recognized the stranger and looked down at Jean to indicate her injury, but only managed to mumble the word "broken". Then the world suddenly skewed and shifted, falling out of focus too fast for him to hang on. The last thing he remembered was the sight of his Phoenix with face like frosted glass, and tresses of deep velvet wine, and then blackness consumed thought and sense. 

***

Dawn broke like a china vase, spilling cidery light across the sky's canvas. Below it, a black river still twisted and tossed in its bed like a large glossy snake, weaving a trail through the sentinel woods, damp and heavy, fierce and quick. Of all the things it wanted, it wanted to crush the life out of every creature that wandered into its depths. Out of bone, into dust, filtering through the black daemon like time itself. 

The light emitted shadows of glory and mirth through the cracks and fractures in the blood red sky. Dawn was casting and spinning her spell of enchantment and wonder, splashing vivid color over everything it touched. The river roared and spewed foam in defiance. 

But out of this river there came a ghostly visage of life. Crumpled and battered, there came the beating of determined hearts and fatigued lungs burning for air. Then a hand broke through the surface, followed by an arm and then a face, with dark chocolate hair and sky blue eyes swallowing the sugary air and pulling a girl to the surface as well. The girl held the boy up as one by one he lifted the stones from his pockets. 

Determined now, the boy and the girl carried each other to shore, each drowning, each saving, coughing water and fighting the current until their limbs felt like jelly. Still, they fought onward, heavy hearts beating as one. Then, a bare foot touched the silty river bottom, followed by three more and driven by new hope they went on. A journey that neither could have made alone would be completed together, arm linked with arm, heart linked with heart, each driven by the desire to rescue the other. They would save each other and together they would live, or together they would perish. 

Sharp rocks sliced open tender young feet til they bleed into the ebony river, restless water pounded into muscle and bone making every nerve quake with lassitude and wet clothes dragged down helpless bodies like deadweight. Then chin surfaced into neck and neck surfaced into shoulder. Air flowed freely now into open throats and the fractured sky broke above them, with the Dawn exploding through. Wishing and knowing are two different things and know is what they did as they rose out of that river. They would live. 

As waist gave way to knee, and limp turned into sag the boy collapsed and the girl crumbled, stumbling the last distance through the shallows and tripping onto the empty back, numb with exhaustion. And so boy and girl lay boneless and amazed side by side on the river bank under the light of the first morning this dream world had ever seen. Wordlessly they pulled closer, murmuring away wounds and pouring sweet devotions into each other's ears. They bleed every tragedy into each other until all that was left was a joy, a joy that they always got out of being together, and an overwhelming gladness to be alive. 

And a nameless word from ages past whispered through maze of mind and abyss of air that maybe this was how it was always meant to be. 

***

Sunlight was the first thing she registered, harsh in its invasion onto her face. She blinked in annoyance and rolled over, burring her face into the pillow. She wanted to go back to that wonderful dream, and she willed every sense in her to shut down, so she could return to that riverbank and never have another care in the world. When her body refused to cooperate, she grumbled and blinked again, deciding upon figuring out where she was. 

Bits and pieces of the events before her dream came back to her. She had been in Scott's arms, and everything had hurt so badly that she wanted to die. Thoughts seeped through her brain and returned to her in pieces and tumbled around in a jumbled mess. She sorted out each sentence by sentence until it all was clear. 

She had been climbing, yes, that was it. Climbing what? A tree . . . the Oak. She had been climbing to see the sunrise, and she had slipped. She had slipped and then she had fallen, and oh how it hurt. Her leg and her head had burned with pain, so great she couldn't move, and then Scott was there, panicking, wanting to get help, and for some reason she had asked him . . . no pleaded him to stay with her. And he stayed, holding her, trying to sooth her mind and screaming for help at the top of his lungs. She remembered his fear, his pain, and his attempts to assuage hers, and then everything had gone black. Where was she now? 

She was laying on her back with a plain white ceiling above her. She shifted and realized that she was in a bed, and the same shin that had burst into pain earlier now felt numb and heavy. Closer examination of her surroundings proved that she was in the med lab, though how she got there was a complete mystery. The activity in her mind had returned back to the steady hum that she was used to, but the mental signature of her best friend did not escape her. 

Sure enough, when she tilted her head to the side she spotted a mop of brown hair resting soundly atop her bed, disguising the features of Scott Summers. She easily deduced that her companion was fast asleep, given the gentle rise and fall of his back, though how he could manage it in a sitting position, she couldn't even begin to imagine. He had once of her hands clasped in his own, and even as he dozed, he would not relinquish it. Her eyes wandered over him fondly before they were snared by the glimmer of light reflecting on glass. 

There, positioned perfectly on a small end table, was a single vase packed with lovingly arranged tickled-pink blossoms, Apple and Lotus to be exact. They wafted a pleasant mixture of aromas throughout the sterile med-lab, and for some reason that simple gesture alone touched her deeply. Gently she raised a hand and ruffled the chocolate head of hair that was presently heaped across her bed. 

Slowly he raised his head and she was met with his expressionless quartz lenses, but it was impossible to miss the look of happiness that spread across his features when he found her awake. She felt his relief wash over her, and returned his smile. 

As for Scott, it had seemed like hours since he had been woken by Dr. McCoy, and informed of Jean's condition. Apparently, the gardener summoned help when he found the two teens collapsed on the ground, and they had both been carted off to the med lab. While, Scott sustained no real injuries, Jean had indeed broken a shin and hit her head pretty hard. Dr. McCoy had gone on to puzzling about how Scott could have passed out though he was physically unharmed. Scott found that he knew the answer, but was unwilling to indulge the good doctor at the time. He didn't care if the doctor believed he had fainted for no good reason or not. The important thing was Jean. She was awake. 

"Hi," She murmured, squeezing his hand that was still latched onto hers in a death grip, "Are you gonna let go of me, or am I gonna have to get a crowbar?" 

He laughed and slowly let go of her hand, "If you're making jokes already, I think you'll be alright." 

After that, came a moment of silence. They both stared at each other for a long while, trying to regroup and figure out what to say next. Almost around the same time they both came to some conclusions about confessions that were long overdue. The whispered word settled into the room, deafening all other noises save the beating of two hearts. It took each only a moment to make up their minds and clear their throats. Then the words finally came. 

"There's something I have to tell you."   


**The End**


End file.
